Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with James Dykstra, Founder, Code Stack Systems

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with James Dykstra, Founder, Code Stack Systems

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with James Dykstra, Founder, Code Stack Systems https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-06-09-2026/ [https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-06-09-2026/] In this forward-looking episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, host Dr. Kirk Adams sits down with James Dykstra, founder of Code Stack Systems, to unpack why so many businesses are watching their AI initiatives stall, and what it actually takes to fix that. Dykstra traces his path from a childhood spent tinkering with DOS to finance and strategy roles at Amazon and Microsoft, then to co-founding a services firm built on the conviction that technology should improve lives. The central insight: companies rush to buy powerful AI tools, but those tools only magnify the gaps in fragmented, poorly tracked data. Using the analogy of a high-performance engine that is useless until it is connected to the rest of the vehicle, and of data as crude oil that must be extracted, refined, and piped before it can power anything, Dykstra explains Code Stack's "work backwards" methodology: start with a client's three-year vision, identify the tools and data required to reach it, and consolidate that data into a single platform rather than ripping out and replacing existing systems. The conversation closes on the future, where Dykstra is candidly optimistic. He anticipates a convergence of robotics, language models, new sensors, and cheaper energy driving steep cost declines, alongside real disruption and the rise of agentic AI, in which people task teams of AI "direct reports" much like human staff. Adams connects this to the accessibility frontier he knows firsthand, noting how rapidly AI-powered access to visual information has gone from novelty to expectation in the blindness and low-vision community, with agentic AI now emerging as the next horizon. Dykstra leaves listeners with a message of hope tempered by realism: the road will be hard, but the foundational investments made now, in the right data behind the right tools, will determine who thrives. TRANSCRIPT: Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Doctor Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody to another episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am that Doctor Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office a blustery Seattle Washington. Today. You might hear some rain whipping against the windows in June Seattle that's that's that's the way we like it. Today I have a really interesting guest from a very interesting company. James Dykstra, the founder of Code Stack Systems, is with us today. Hi, James. James Dykstra: Hello, doctor. Kirk Adams, thank you very much for having me on the show. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, absolutely. So encountered code stack. I attended and, and gave a keynote presentation to a two day, two day gathering here in Seattle in March of start up companies and entrepreneurs and incubators and people interested in innovative technologies. And afterwards, one of the attendees, a gentleman named Ruben, came up to me and he said, I was really struck by your keynote presentation and in particular, your differentiation between impairment and disability. And it really resonated with me and I think it would resonate with my team. So would you. Would you be interested in getting on a call and talking more about it, and learning about what we do, and telling us more about what you do, and see if we could work together in some form or fashion. And I of course said, of course. I'm, I'm very prone to say, yes, let's, let's let's get to know one another and let's find where we share common ground and how we can help each other move forward. And so did that. Got on a call with, with the team. And we're continuing dialogue as I am an advisor to in a shareholder in another, a number of disability tech startups and always wanting to understand how innovation can create a more inclusive world and a world that's more accessible to everybody. And in my case, particularly people with disabilities. And so I will take just one minute 90s to talk about that differentiation between impairment and disability that that Rubin was struck by. Dr. Kirk Adams: So myself. Yeah. So myself, I'm totally blind, have been since age five. And I live in a world of work and play and scholarship and family. And many of the environments I operated in are not constructed specifically with me in mind. My impairment, visual impairment, my inability to see. And so we think about living in three different environments that we as human beings have created. One is built, which is the physical, one is social and one is digital. And as a person with an impairment, I only am in disabling situations when certain aspects of those three built environments don't allow me to interact the way I want to with the environment. And a super simple example I always use. If you've listened to the podcast before, you can go get a cup of coffee because I'm going to say it again. But one example is if I'm leading a board meeting, which I've done many, many times, and I'm at the head of the boardroom conference table and I have my my agenda, my minutes, my committee reports in Braille since I am a Braille reader although I have a visual impairment, I'm not in a disabling situation because I can interact effectively with the built environment because of the Braille. If you have brought, if you've if you brought me a a stack of print materials and handed it to me and asked me to run the meeting, then my impairment, my visual impairment, my lack of being able to see puts me in a disabling situation because I am not able to interact with the environment the way I want, because the piece of the built environment I'm trying to interact with this print, I cannot access that because of my impairment. Dr. Kirk Adams: So now another little example is if I'm in a large meeting room and I come to this point in my talk and I say, is there anyone in the room who's five foot two or shorter? I clap your hands. It's always a couple people. And I say, you have a characteristic of your height. If you walk into a room and there's a package that you need and it's on a shelf eight feet off the floor your characteristic of height does not allow you to interact effectively with the built environment of the high shelf. So you can, you can get a tool like a stepladder or stool to reach the package. You can create a team with a taller person with characteristic of higher, taller height and ask them to help you get the package down. You can make a modification to your environment, build a lower shelf. So next time you don't face that situation. So those are just some simple examples of what I meant. And sometime during the day, Ruben from, from code stack systems did approach me and, and said, you know, that, that really struck me. Dr. Kirk Adams: I just kept keep thinking about it, thinking about how my company can create better fits for people and environments and how we can reduce the number of disabling situations for people with various characteristics. And again, he asked if I would like to talk to the team. So long winded path to tell you how I met James. James and I have had a couple conversations and are planning to have many more, but really, really interested in what code stack does with their really I'd say guru guru level, enlightened level of understanding of systems including AI and how AI can, can work to serve us as human beings and can work to help companies move forward and just ask James if he would come on the podcast talk about his journey a little bit about your past experience. James, how you got your life before code stack the company journey so far where you're at the types of projects that you're involved in that you're interested in that, that fire the team up. And then maybe a little bit about the, what you're seeing for the future. So I'm going, I'm going to hand you the talking stick and I'll pop in with questions from time to time as as they as they occur to me. So thanks again for being here. Looking, looking forward to learning. James Dykstra: Well, thank you very much for having me, Doctor Adams. It's an honor to be here with you. The it's a long story, but I'll make it short. I would always go to soup kitchens and go to church with my mom and dad growing up. And so I was taught from a young age to, to work at things that really help, help improve people's lives and create opportunities for others. And, you know, at the same time I discovered computers my earliest memories of my, of me sitting on the floor and my mom fuddling with computer manuals, trying to set up a computer that was probably in 93 or 94, and I, I wrote my first line of code, which was doom dot exe from, from from DOS, you know, the command prompt access. You know, when I was at the age of six just trying to hide the fact that I was playing inappropriate games from my parents. And so I carried on that passion for technology and that interest for helping other people as I, as I went into the corporate world and I began working on financial consolidations and pricing, and it wasn't as rewarding as I wanted it to be. I didn't feel fulfilled. That said, I'm extremely grateful for the experiences I've had, helping with the, the pricing teams and Amazon and Microsoft and the finance teams and Amazon and the strategy teams at Amazon and Microsoft. James Dykstra: And I really wanted to make a bigger and distinct impact of my own. And so when I met Rubin at Amazon, he was working in business intelligence engineering, and I was working in financial consolidations. And so we were both trying to paint a picture of the business reality. And we both loved consulting. We loved understanding what makes a business profitable and how to position a business and optimize operations to create durable profitability. And so we said, well, we'd love to have a software company one day. And yet at that time, building software was pretty expensive and we didn't want to sell our restricted stock that had recently vested. And so we created a services firm where we sought to improve lives with technology by Improving the availability and observability of intelligence in a business. Dr. Kirk Adams: Then roughly, when was this? James Dykstra: Oh gosh, I think this was let's see, 2019, 2018, 2019. Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh seven, seven, seven, seven years ago. Okay. James Dykstra: Yeah. And so we said, well, okay, which businesses can we serve that will make a meaningful difference in the world? And so we sought out ag tech. We sought out nonprofits to serve in helping them improve the profitability of their business and to advance their mission through, through service. And, you know, it's not exactly really glamorous data consolidations and improving the general operational observability of a business, but it lays the foundation for these businesses to track their KPIs and to improve their overall performance, which keeps them in business. And so we're really, really passionate about increasing access to information and the ability to make a positive change in the world. And we've always done that through deeply understanding what data is available, identifying areas where we can insert additional tracking to give better visibility to a business operation. And then with that intelligence, empower the broader team to take action on those insights, no matter where they are in their skill journey. You know, most of these business owners that we were contracting with, they didn't have the technical prowess to, to access the data. And oftentimes they weren't tracking the right insights. And so they didn't have operational visibility to really improve their business and to hold themselves and their teams accountable to their goals. And so that's, that's been our, our path over the last seven years has been really helping businesses that we believe were improving the quality of life of people by creating that observability and enabling all people to action business intelligence. And right now, we're at the best time of my lifetime to be able to make that positive impact. Because right now, when a business is able to consolidate its data, to create accessibility in its data and have the ability to really observe the operation, whether it's with machine vision or better tracking of operations through sensors. Everyone is empowered then to potentially in the future, task agents as as directors. And so it's very, very exciting time. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. If you could walk through a hypothetical, maybe you said something that struck me, and I'm not going to be able to quote you verbatim, but that the, the, the teams of the companies you're working with may not have the May not have the data they need, or they might be looking at the wrong data or they might not be asking the right questions or they, they might be tracking elements that aren't optimal. And I don't exactly remember how you said it, but the gist was they may be looking at the wrong things. So yeah, you know, how, how would you, how do you work with a company or perhaps a either a real life story of a company you've worked with or a hypothetical, but what's the methodology? How do you how do you dig in and help, help these companies understand what they should be looking at and how to look at it, how how to gather the data, and then what does the data consolidation? How does that manifest for them? James Dykstra: Yeah. True to our background, we focus on working backwards, which is an Amazonian principle. James Dykstra: We sit down with the business owner and we talk with them. We say, hey, what are your three year goals? Where do you want to take this? What is your vision for the future? And most businesses say, well, we want to increase revenue by 50% or two X boost. They typically say, we want to keep our operation lean and see our margins expand as we scale And so, for example, if the manufacturer. We we often find that they have limited visibility in terms of as the inventory or the, the raw materials come in, how effectively those are processed and then oftentimes installed post post manufacture. And so very often we're seeing opportunities right now, especially with the advances in AI, to install sensors that are able to capture a control tower view of the manufacturing operation, overseeing the floor where everyone is working, and you can see the performance of each contributor to the process. You can see how much material is being produced. You can more readily gauge defect rates, and we're really able to help businesses get a better sense of how do I create value efficiently, and how do I keep my costs low and hold my team accountable to the standards we have, especially around quality control and a manufacturing operation? And so that's an example, a more recent example of a very exciting opportunity where we are able to track new information to improve the business results. James Dykstra: That said, we're still doing the traditional where we look at each of the tools the business is currently using in that early conversation, typically with the general manager or CTO and COO Or the owner of the business. And we'll ask, well, given your three year goal, which tools do you need to achieve that vision? And we list out all the tools they're currently using. And we, we seek an understanding of where do data silos exist? Because very often one tool doesn't connect to another. And then critical insight is lost because it's living in a separate place. And so for example, you might have a difficulty understanding your, your accounts receivable or producing a price quote in an automated fashion. If part of the data is living in six different systems. Dr. Kirk Adams: Right? James Dykstra: So after we have that conversation about the tools to get them where they need to go, we have a conversation regarding will, which data App is required to power those tools. Right now, more than ever, we are seeing enormous enthusiasm about AI, and it's warranted. It's incredible. The technology is wonderful. The number of lives that are going to be positively impacted. I'm hugely optimistic about the future. It's very, very exciting. And understandably, when a business owner and their staff see a really exciting new product, they say, well, let's, let's buy it. Let's try it. Very understandable. Well, they buy it and they try it. And it only magnifies the current defects in their data capture process. And so they're buying the new tool, but they don't have the data to power that tool and to get the results that they expect out of it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: So we find ourselves in this situation right now where so many business owners are seeing their AI pilots fail. I read a. Dr. Kirk Adams: Gartner and I read. Dr. Kirk Adams: I read very recently, and I can't quote the statistics, but I can quote the, the, the gist of the, the research was that AI seems to be increasing, enhancing the productivity of individuals and a large percentage of individuals using AI find it helpful. And correspondingly, organizations, structures, companies are having a, the reverse experience. You know, far fewer organizations are finding AI, making them more productive and effective. So I think. Dr. Kirk Adams: That's. Dr. Kirk Adams: That that's along the lines of what you've been learning as people as you say, understandably want to always embrace the, the latest technology and innovation and be, be on that cutting edge. They, they, they employ AI and what, what I just heard you say is that it, it oftentimes reveals the structural structural problems that they have in the organization. It magnifies them or amplifies them. Is that what I'm hearing? James Dykstra: Absolutely. And Ruben showed me recently a Gartner survey, I believe it was early 2026 survey could be mistaken on the the date. It stated that the estimated Gartner estimates that 60% of enterprise AI pilots will fail by the end of 2026. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: 60%. That's that's unheard of. Perhaps in the history of business pilots. And the reason they're failing is because they've, they've bought the new tool. It's an incredibly powerful tool and they've fed it the data that they have. Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. James Dykstra: And oftentimes that data is incomplete. They're it may live in the ERP and the CRM in order to paint the whole picture, for example, or their database. And without bringing that data together in a consolidated view. James Dykstra: A single consolidated data platform, which is part of our expertise code stack systems. Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. James Dykstra: They aren't able to paint a complete view of the business. And so there's something critical missing when those models give outputs and recommendations to these businesses. Dr. Kirk Adams: I think you gave me the analogy of a an engine. You buy this powerful engine and put it in a vehicle, but it doesn't do any good unless it's connected to all of the other systems in the vehicle. James Dykstra: Exactly. Exactly. And what I like to say to many business owners and, and other founders is that. Just like an engine or as a machine might be powered by gasoline, your data is, is an asset like, like crude oil that needs to be extracted from the systems in which it lives. It also needs to be identified and potentially new wells drilled tracking new data that you haven't currently had a reason to to track in the past, for example. And so first you have to identify where that data is. Extract it, refine it, really clean the data, and then you have to store it effectively. And so after it's extracted and refined and then stored safely and compliantly, then you have an opportunity to build a pipeline like a data pipeline and connect it to that machine. And unless those things happen, the machine does not run as expected. Dr. Kirk Adams: And so if I'm a client of code stack systems, and since I know manufacturing, I'm a manufacturer and I've engaged you and you come in and, and lead lead through the process. What's our vision for three years? What tools do we need? What data do we need to support those tools? Then when when you when you finish the product project, the initiative, the work, what what what are you leaving me? What are you leaving me with? Is it an ERP system? Is it a dashboard? Is it a set of tools? What, what I guess what is the, the manifestation of your work that, that you're, you're giving to me as the owner of the manufacturing enterprise? James Dykstra: Yeah. So when we think about what are the tools that power the change in the business, we recognize that the tool is simply a leverage point. And what we're really looking for is to deeply understand what are the business processes happening in the business and how do we essentially optimize those business processes? We can improve the reliability of manufacturing, for example. And through implementing new sensors and automations. And so at the end of the day, what we're leaving behind are optimized business processes that are supported with automation. Oftentimes AI automation and the underlying data platform that can feed all of your future AI tools. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: So it's a very big unlock. Being able to consolidate the data in an automated and effective way from all the systems that a business has. So at the end of the day, when we walk away, a business then has the foundation to Use the AI tools of the future needed to hit their three year goal, and they have as a top priority the business processes and functioning tools needed to grow sales or to optimize productivity in the manufacturing operation. Dr. Kirk Adams: So I, I've been, I've been moving down my path. I have a manufacturing company, I have a ERP system, a Oracle based or whatever it is. And I'm managing my business not as optimally as I can. And you're going to come help me. Are you replacing my systems? Are you enhancing my systems? Are you adding stuff, taking stuff out? What does that look like? James Dykstra: We try to avoid ripping and replacing systems and meeting the business where they are. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: We've found that most businesses cannot stomach the huge change management challenge and systems implementation challenge of ripping and replacing systems, right? At times, we will work with the business to determine when a new additional system is appropriate. For example, perhaps they want to move to SAP and they are using QuickBooks with some really advanced tooling that they've built, oftentimes a custom tooling. And they want to have a CRM. They want to have these systems throughout the business to be able to track the health and performance of each organization. And so what we're really focused on is understanding what tool, which tools are currently in play, which tools need to be added, and then how do we reliably access the data that's being stored and captured by each of these tools? And then we can even refine and improve the data living in those tools. So Ruben likes to say that oftentimes we're building a semantic layer in, in the data that is living outside of these tools. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: So how do we want to define units shipped, for example, in Amazon? There are multiple definitions of units shipped and of sales. Some include for example like sales with or without credits. And so what we're able to do is clearly define Codify what are the business rules and how do we want to interpret the data. And we can build that into the data outside of the systems. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: That are kind of like the initial source. And so we're improving and enriching this data in this consolidated data platform that will then power all the newest and best tools. Dr. Kirk Adams: So I want, I want to ask you about, about future vision and future state and AI and and how, where you see things going and there's always information and opinion swirling and you know, again, I see research reports, I see surveys of recent college graduates and the huge percentage who, you know, for their future employment because they believe AI will be supplanting human beings and the types of jobs that recent college graduates are, are typically hired for. In the accessibility world, there's lots of excitement about how AI can make the world more accessible. And from my standpoint, as a blind person, there are, you know, functions that we in the past needed to rely on sighted assistance that now AI can can provide to increase our independence and create more frequent, better fits between our cells with our impairments and the environment. And we, we see information about productivity and we see people protesting the thoughts of data centers being built in their neighborhoods. And you know, it's very very fluid very much at a, I guess, a Creative frontier. So just with with your long experience and and vastly more sophisticated experience than I have what's top of mind for you? What are what are you seeing? What are you thinking about? What are, what are you imagining? James Dykstra: I'm very, very excited about the future. We've never been in a situation where the cost of, you know, dollars per or whichever denomination, you know, ex currency per mile traveled you know, per kilowatt hour per unit input to a manufacturing process is going to decline so precipitously. And that's going to create utopian abundance. Dr. Kirk Adams: Is that through efficiency? James Dykstra: Yeah, absolutely. Through efficiency, through the application of robotics, reasoning, material science breakthroughs, manufacturing breakthroughs, and of course, energy production. We are making significant advances in all of these areas and the what we like to call downstream impact or like positive lift downstream from all of these advances is extremely cheap transportation in the future. James Dykstra: Extremely cheap manufactured goods, very likely extremely cheap services. With the advent of humanoid mass produced robotics. And the reason why we're seeing this really shocking, shocking Price decrease and it's anticipated over the next really the next three years, we're going to see a huge, huge transformation is because novel technologies have matured and converged in a very, very timely way. So robotics, which is which can be construed as unlimited physical labor and language models, coupled with well organized comprehensive data sets which can be construed as unlimited reasoning. New sensor types and new model types for gathering information. And so it's extremely exciting to see all of these factors come together. That said, every job in the future will be very likely performed differently than it is today. Many new jobs will exist, and at the same time, there will be great disruption and great frustration with the magnitude and sheer acceleration of this change. And so it's not going to be an easy road. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. James Dykstra: But the end of the road is very, very bright where work will potentially, for many people, be optional. The baseline quality of living will be dramatically higher than it's ever been in the past. And with the significant enhancements in AI assisted health care, the quality of life will be equally better. We're talking about longevity, escape velocity where we're going to be adding a year and a half for every year that passes within 5 to 10 years. And so the future is very, very bright. And the technology will be a great equalizer amongst people because the ability to sense and gather data from the environment is more incredible right now than ever before. And all of that data can be processed in ways it could never be processed before and made available to us to consume. However, we'd like to consume it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I'm just thinking about access to visual information and AI. And it's all there very, very much sweeping the blindness and low vision communities, the smart glasses, for instance, where you can ask AI to describe what's in front of you or even describe a video with with really good accuracy. Of course, there are hallucinations. And if it's if it's if it's a matter of safety or privacy, you know, the need to verify. But I went to the sea Sun conference, the California State University, Northridge, large accessibility assistive technology conference. And the last one I went to most people were talking about access to visual information. And that was in 2025. And now in 2026, it, the focus shifted within 12 months. The image, the access to visual information seem to be an accepted new asset for us, and the next frontier seemed to be agentic AI. And I know when you were first describing Code Stack, you talked about agents or directors, AI directing various functions within companies. Can you talk a little bit about that, about the emergence of AI and whether or not I'm using the right, right terminology? James Dykstra: The the terminology is changing every day. And so you'll see an executive from Microsoft describing the same technology, different from differently from an executive from Nvidia. And so we're, we're still maturing and finding a common nomenclature for these wonderful technologies. My background in AI started with recommendation models and you know, in a pricing context. And then when I moved over to Microsoft, I helped initially lead business planning for the Microsoft Cloud for retail before expanding to include all of the other industries in my purview. And when just focused on retail, we were launching products such as Microsoft's Intelligent Recommendation service that could find visual matches and other predictive matching. And then, of course, over time, AI emerged in new modalities, new models such as small and large language models. And it was very exciting to be in that industry. Business planning capacity explore for each industry. What are the applications for a language model and new types of AI inference and compute heavy workloads to really improve lives with this technology. Because industry is a very, very beautiful thing because it gives us all of our modern products and services and conveniences that underpin our quality of life. James Dykstra: And so after rolling out a number of different models that were that pertained to specific industry applications, we then moved further toward, well, how do I couple this model with knowledge, tools, governance, and the ability to orchestrate across different tools to effectively create what's called an AI agent? By most these days, AI, as we're currently Describing it is really a collection of a number of foundational technologies where the model is only one piece, and without all the other pieces, it is defunct or unsafe. And so as we look to the future and we think about these language models that are equipped with knowledge and tools and governance and the ability to organize which tool should be called for, which purpose, and which data is acceptable to access for which purpose. We have a huge opportunity for us to task these, let's call them tool composites. And for all of us to have a team of direct reports that are the agents that we task to achieve our business outcomes or our creative pursuits. Dr. Kirk Adams: Amazing. Dr. Kirk Adams: So the time has flown. The time has flown by. I've took I've taken a lot of notes. I look forward to working more closely with you and team and learning more and getting a deeper understanding of the nuances of, of what you do. I know more now than I did before we started this conversation today. What, what would you like to leave people listening with? How can people get in touch? How can people connect with you? James Dykstra: Absolutely. I'd like to especially leave behind a message of hope. All of this change will be really challenging. And if we're able to work through these challenges together, we can create an incredibly beautiful future where we have options and where everyone is empowered to lead a fulfilling and gratifying life. So I want everyone, especially those who are involved in, in running businesses and creating some of that value that's going to positively impact the lives of others to consider beyond just the tool. The tool is very exciting. What foundational investments need to be made and what is the priority of those investments? Working backward from that priority business outcome. And so with code stack systems, we want to team up to support businesses that are going to improve lives with technology. And we want to do that by empowering them with the right tools that are powered by the right data. And so to reach out to me and the team, you can reach out to me via LinkedIn and anyone can schedule a meeting with me. Happy to have a one on one and talk and learn from others, and they are happy and welcome to visit the website Code Stack systems.com where they can sign up for a free consultation, where we sit down with business leaders and we learn about their priorities, and we work backward from those objectives. To help define a technology standpoint, what steps need to be taken for them to thrive in the future? Dr. Kirk Adams: Fabulous. Well I'm excited. My my my feelings about AI vacillate between concern and enthusiasm. You've tipped me toward you've tipped me a little bit toward the enthusiasm into the scale today, which I appreciate. And thanks, everyone for listening to another episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. To connect with me, my website is https://DrKirkAdams.com. You can sign up for my newsletter. You can fill out a contact form. I'm also on LinkedIn every day. Crossed paths with James on LinkedIn from time to time. And again, thanks for listening. And we'll we'll talk to you next time. Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Laura Bratton, Keynote Speaker, Author of Harnessing Courage, and Coach on Navigating Change with Grit and Gratitude

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Laura Bratton, Keynote Speaker, Author of Harnessing Courage, and Coach on Navigating Change with Grit and Gratitude https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-05-05-2026/ [https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-05-05-2026/] In this reflective episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with Laura Bratton [https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-bratton-speaking/], a professional speaker, author, and coach [https://www.laurabratton.com/] who lost her sight to an unnamed rod and cone dystrophy diagnosed at age nine and was totally blind by the end of high school. Bratton walks through her academic path from an undergraduate degree in psychology at Arizona State to a Master of Divinity at Princeton, where she was the program's first blind student and had to build her own self-advocacy playbook around accessible textbooks, testing accommodations, and screen reader workflows. Now an ordained United Methodist pastor, she frames her work around change management and the twin resources she calls grit and gratitude, the subject of her book Harnessing Courage: Overcoming Adversity Through Grit and Gratitude. The conversation digs into how those two resources function in practice. Bratton defines grit not as Southern "suck it up" stoicism but as acknowledging hard feelings and choosing to move forward anyway, and she defines gratitude as a daily mindset practice, naming three specific things from the day, that reframes perspective without papering over pain. She and Adams trade notes on the intertwined nature of psychological, spiritual, and physical healing, the role of mindfulness, breath work, and body scans in managing anxiety, and the everyday gratitude blind professionals feel for accessible technology, screen readers, and Braille materials. Bratton speaks primarily to associations and corporations navigating organizational change, recently to a real estate association and an athletic directors' group, and points listeners to LauraBratton.com for her book, speaking, and coaching work. TRANSCRIPT: Advertisement: This podcast brought to you by Pneuma Solutions. Advertisement: I can't see it. Advertisement: ADA Title II has a real compliance deadline. April 2026. Public entities are required to make their digital content accessible, including websites, PDFs, reports, applications, and public records. If a document cannot be read with a screen reader, it is not compliant and if it is not compliant, blind people are still being denied equal access. For a clear explanation of what the rule requires, visit www.title2.info. It's one of the leading resources explaining what agencies must do and when. This message is brought to you by Pneuma Solutions, we have remediated hundreds of thousands of pages in days, not months or years, aligned with WCAG 2 AA guidelines at a fraction of traditional costs. Accessibility isn't a privilege, it's a right. Now that you know, ask your agencies a simple question, are your documents actually accessible? Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Doctor Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everyone to another episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. And I am that Doctor Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I have a super interesting guest, Laura Bratton. Laura is a professional speaker and author, and we met, of course, via LinkedIn, but I will, I will not steal her thunder. I will let her tell you about her fascinating journey through life in a few moments. If you could just say, hi, Laura. Laura Bratton: Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm excited to be here. Dr. Kirk Adams: Absolutely. So for those of you who don't know me, I am a blind person. Have been since age five when my retinas detached. I went to the Oregon State School for the blind. First, second, third grade, learned my Braille, my cane travel, my typing, my independence, my sense of agency and internal locus of control, and all those things that set me up for successfully sinking and swimming through public school, starting in fourth grade, and then on through college and graduate school and getting my doctorate in leadership and change and all those things. I do live in Seattle, married for 40 years to my lovely college sweetheart. Two grown children, two amazing grandchildren. And I am the Executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion here in Seattle. And also managing director of my consulting practice, Innovative Impact, LLC. And I go through life pursuing fun, innovative, high impact projects that I think will accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of living and thriving. And I like to, I like to do projects with people I like and admire. And Laura, Laura is one of those. So I would just love to hand you the talking stick, Laura, and ask you to talk about where have you been and where are you now and where are you going? And I as host, I'll reserve the right to pop in with random questions as they occur to me. So the floor is yours. Laura Bratton: Absolutely. So I want to talk about what I do professionally, because that connects both the professional and the personal experience. So professionally, I'm a speaker, author, coach. And when I speak on is change management, how do we as companies, as organizations? And then even more so as individuals, how do we navigate through change? And what I wrote my book on, what I coach on, and then specifically what I speak on within that realm of change management, navigating through change is how do we use the resources of grit and how do we use the resources of gratitude to navigate through change so that we don't just experience change or shut down with fear or just shut down being overwhelmed. But we are able to experience that change and keep going and reach our goals, reach our potentials, use our gifts, have the purpose that we are in the world. And the reason that I speak on that and wrote my book on that and coach on that topic is because of my life experience. So at the age of nine, I was diagnosed with extremely rare eye condition, like continue pretty much normal, about the same until teenage years. Dr. Kirk Adams: And then and name that condition. Laura Bratton: It does not have a name. Dr. Kirk Adams: Oh, wow. Okay. That's rare. Laura Bratton: I'm in my 40s now and we're still doing gene therapy. Gene therapy, gene testing. So it does not have a name. Dr. Kirk Adams: So how how did it manifest? I mean, lots of people listen to this podcast are blind or visually impaired or, or are interested in dynamics around visual impairment. So how. Laura Bratton: Does it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Manifest? Manifest. Laura Bratton: It manifested by my parents. It was just a slight change. So slight. So much so that as in me as a nine year old, I wasn't aware of the changes. My parents noticed very minor changes like holding the book a little bit closer to my face, or I would sit to the in the chair closest to the TV, rather than just anywhere in the den. Again, they weren't major drought drastic changes. So my parents just figured, okay, we'll go to the doctor, get her eyes checked. You know, maybe she's near-sighted. Far side needs a cute pair of pink glasses and we'll be on our merry way. That's what my parents assumed. That wasn't the reality at that visit. My. My eyes were dilated. Laura Bratton: The doctor took one look at me and said, there's something major going on with her retinas. We've got to figure out what's going on. So that led to a summer of doctor's appointments. I ended up at Emory University in Atlanta with a pediatric retina specialist. And that's where she didn't give me a formal diagnosis because they're still not a formal diagnosis. But she could confirm, yes, the cells of your retina are dying. So it's a rod and cone dystrophy. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Okay. Laura Bratton: So I lost my central first and then still had my peripheral. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. And where are you at now? Laura Bratton: Totally blind. Just very limited light perception. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Well, I spent my share. Share. I spent a good share of my childhood with pediatric retinal specialists as well. Laura Bratton: So you understand. Dr. Kirk Adams: We have that in common. My year was at Emory. Mine was at the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland. Laura Bratton: Okay. Okay, so you understand lots of blood work, right? Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And lots of lots of students looking into your eyes. Laura Bratton: Oh my God. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Oh, that is so true. That is 100% true. Dr. Kirk Adams: Another story for another day, but okay. Laura Bratton: No, that's a whole nother podcast. Dr. Kirk Adams: So I just wanted to establish. So basically, you're a totally blind person at this point in your life. Laura Bratton: Oh, yeah. Not basically I am. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Well, I, I I digressed you off of your your path, but well, no. Laura Bratton: It was perfect. Perfectly fits because I through the high school, I didn't just wake up one day and have no vision. It was a gradual process. Yet it was quick because by the end of high school, I was totally blind. So I would lose a lot of vision and there were plateaued for about a year, and then I'll lose a lot more vision and then plateau for a while. So again, by the end of high school, I was totally blind and have what I have now just light perception. So during that transition of obviously going from fully sighted in a sighted world to now being blind in a sighted world, I had to figure out how to adapt. I had to figure out how to adjust, how do I move forward and not be shut down with anxiety, not be overwhelmed by the both the present and the future. So that's where over time, clearly it wasn't overnight, but over time, I learned the balance of grit and the balance of gratitude. And so that's why I speak on and wrote my book on and coach on. How do we navigate through change? Because I, I lived through it and still, as you can relate, lives as a person without sight in the sight of the world. Yes. I'm adapted. Yes, I'm adjusted. And yet there's still those daily frustrations aggravations where we need those resources. So that's the reason I speak and do what I do professionally is because of my personal life experience. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, tell us about your book. Laura Bratton: So Harnessing Courage. First, I want to talk about the title. The title just makes me smile. And I absolutely love the title. And I worked with a publisher very closely on naming specifically that. So in between those few months in between high school and college, I got my first guide dog. So my first guide dog through college, grad school, first few years of profession. And then I got my second guide dog. I had her for also about 11 or 12 years, and then she died about two years ago. So in respect and just with gratitude for those two guide dogs and the gift that they were to me, that's why I named it harness. And so the harness, obviously, I know, you know, but just for anyone listening, the harness is the leather strap that goes around the dog that then the blind person holds the handle. So it took a lot of courage for me to hold that harness and move forward. And also for that dog, they had to trust me, depend on me to take care of them as they were my eyes. So just out of respect for the gift they were to me, I named it Harness and Courage because throughout the book I talk about every day, we have to harness that courage as we navigate through change. Laura Bratton: So that's why I wrote it. So the titles Harness and Courage. The subtitle is Overcoming Adversity Through Grit and Gratitude. And the purpose of the book is not to be a one, two, three felt. Read this and in 30 days you will be happy. Or the 30 days you know you will have a joyful life forevermore. The point of the book is to be a resource, to be a resource, to say, this was my personal experience of going through and becoming blind. Here are the resources I found to navigate through. How can you also apply the grit and also apply the gratitude as you go through your adversity? So it's not just for people who are blind, it's for any of us going through adversity, going through loss. On how do we navigate through? And so again, it's not a self-help. It's a resource on how can you apply these. So like I wrote a chapter on accepting our new normal. I wrote a chapter on becoming comfortable in our own skin. So again, that applies to any of us going through loss, going through trauma, going through adversity. So that's, that's the point and the goal of the book. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I, I do want to ask you about your academic career because it is also really unique. I learned about when we had our first conversation. Laura Bratton: So I went to undergrad at Arizona State and I majored in psychology. And then I went to grad school at Princeton and got a divinity. Oh, I said that backwards. A master's in divinity. And the reason, the purpose for that. And now I'm an ordained pastor in the ordained clergy in the United Methodist Church. And the reason for that is, as I went through my own personal journey of adapting and adjusting while continuing to move forward, it was evident through me, to me, through my lived experience. Healing was not just psychological. Healing was not just spiritual healing was that mind, body, spirit, connection all intertwined. So getting my undergrad in psychology was great and wonderful, yet I knew I wanted to look at it holistically. How does the spiritual theological play in with our physical healing, with the emotional healing, with the psychological healing? So that was. Dr. Kirk Adams: Could you could you talk a little bit about that? How do you how do you how do you see that? What is the shape? Laura Bratton: So what I mean by that is, again, from my personal experience, I did just not Adapt and heal. And what I mean by healing is regaining my confidence, regaining that, okay, I'm comfortable in my own skin. I'm comfortable who I am as a person who's blind in a sighted world. My healing was not just psychological. I didn't just go to a therapist and meet with a therapist once a week and say, ta da, I'm healed. Life is good. I'm adapting, I'm adjusted. But yet it wasn't just all spiritual. It wasn't just, okay, I have a spiritual practice. I have a spiritual faith. That's my anchor. I move on or it wasn't just, okay, let me focus on exercising. Let me focus on mindfulness. Let me focus on eating healthy. And that's how I heal. It was all of those connected. It was learning mindfulness practices. It was having that workout routine. It was having those learning those healthy sleep patterns. It was having that gratitude practice, leaning on those spiritual mentors and guides. It was connecting and meeting with a therapist. So that's what I mean. It wasn't just one resource. It was multiple resources connecting all intertwined that you really can't separate them. So that's what I found in my own experience. And then working with so many other people in different types of loss. Dr. Kirk Adams: Curious about how do you practice gratitude? Just like the, the actual tactics, the mechanics of what, what do you do personally? Laura Bratton: So I have to share how gratitude originally started for me. And then that'll make it clear why I practice what I practice today. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay, okay. Laura Bratton: So I want to make it clear I did not wake up one day and say, oh geez, this life is great. I love being a teenager who all of a sudden different, you know, like no longer normal. This is wonderful. I'm so thankful to have to learn Braille. So I didn't just wake up and instantly become grateful. The way that gratitude came to me was towards the end of high school, I had a mentor say to me, Laura, I want you to start developing a mindset of gratitude. Well, let me put it in context. I grew up in the Deep South, in the southeast of the United States. So what do you do? You smile and nod and say thank you. Right? Like you don't challenge. And this is like late 90s. So you don't challenge you don't you just smile and nod and act happy all the time and say, yes, ma'am. So I did that in my head. I'm thinking, oh, wow, you are a terrible mentor. Like, I'm depressed, I'm anxious, I'm grieving. I don't have anything to be grateful for. So only in my stubbornness did I say, okay, I'm going to prove to her I have nothing to be grateful for. I'm going to try this, but it's only out of stubbornness that I can say to her, by the way, lady who doesn't need to be mentoring teenagers, I have nothing to be grateful for. So part of what or mainly what she said to me was to start this practice. I want you to think about every day. At the end of the day, three people, places, situations from the day that you're grateful for. Laura Bratton: So it's not just your general family food shelter. It's very specific from that day. Yeah. So again, that's why I'm the whole thing. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is ridiculous. This is crazy. I'm anxious, depressed. Absolutely not. The one day became a week. The week became a month. And what I slowly realized over time was she was not saying. Be grateful for the blindness. Be grateful in everything. For everything. All the time. Walk around being happy, smiley, joyful, blah blah. She was teaching me to develop a mindset that allows me to be grateful for what I have in the midst of life, in the good, in the bad, in the mundane, in it all. That's what she meant by a practice of gratitude. So it started for me by saying, no, I'm not grateful for having these challenges and difficulties and adversity in life, but I am grateful for is technology that makes the computer accessible so I can learn and use jaws, and now use VoiceOver so that the computer is accessible. No, I'm not grateful for this life, but what I am grateful for is that older brother who just continue to treat me like that annoying little sister. Vision or no vision, right? Like, yeah, I'm. I'm in. God, you know, he's in college. I'm in high school. He still thinks I'm annoying. He was always in my sight, right? I'm still that sister that drives me crazy. I was so grateful for that normalcy. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Laura Bratton: So that was how I reframed and changed that perspective. Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. Laura Bratton: On being grateful. Dr. Kirk Adams: And I'm guessing that you talked about how everything's intertwined and you can't pull these threads separately out of, out of your, your healing, which talked about regaining your confidence. But I'm guessing the gratitude practice and mindfulness practice must be closely intertwined. Laura Bratton: Absolutely. Dr. Kirk Adams: Pay as you pay attention to the present, the present, now moment, as the Dao says. Laura Bratton: Right? So mindfulness told me thoughts or thoughts, they come and go. Thoughts are not absolute facts. So before I learned about mindfulness and before I took a class in mindfulness, I thought, you know, when I have an anxious thought, oh gosh, I'm going to be anxious for now forever, I'm going down this deep dark hole. What mindfulness and the practice of mindfulness taught me was, okay, I have that thought that I'm anxious. That's just a thought. I get to decide what do I do with that thought? And the other major gift that mindfulness gave me was focusing on my breath. I realized that as I became anxious, my breath was shallow, and that gave me the opportunity to realize, oh, there goes my shallow breath. I need to turn towards my breath and think about breathing from my diaphragm, not the short, shallow breaths and what mindfulness also told me. Was the gift of the body scan. Noticing. Where am I holding tension in my body? Because again, when I was anxious, I didn't realize I was tensing, my shoulders tensing, my stomach tensing my feet. I didn't realize that. But once I became aware of how my body is reacting, I could relax my shoulders, release my feet, release my hands, you know? So my body was relaxed. So yeah, you said it perfectly. They're so intertwined, you can't pull out those threads. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Laura Bratton: So the, the gift I want to give to everyone on gratitude is start your gratitude practice by thinking, at the end of the day, what you're grateful for. Even if you're like me and listening and saying, you are weird, I have nothing right before in my life. I'm not going to do it. Be stubborn. Right? Like do what I was doing, prove me wrong, and try to think of things you're grateful for. Three is just a number that our. Our. It's easy for our brain to connect with. It could be one. It could be ten. If it's two or if it's seven, that's okay. The point is not the number. The point is just that you start to get in the habit of thinking about what you're grateful for. Dr. Kirk Adams: So so this morning, the three things I wrote down, three things I am especially grateful for today. Rachel coming home. Our daughter has a ten hour layover in Seattle. She's trying to LA from LA to Miami through Seattle to land at ten tonight and leave at eight tomorrow morning. She'll be here. And she she requested split pea soup, so my wife's making split pea soup. So I wrote Rachel Coming home, Braille books because I got some Braille books on the porch yesterday from library and our tax return. Amy. So those are my three from yesterday. Laura. Laura Bratton: That is awesome. That is great. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So do you. You do you use terms like breath work and body work. Can you talk about the body scan and breathing? Laura Bratton: Are those absolutely 100% 100%. Dr. Kirk Adams: So I was thinking about grit, grit and gratitude and how they work together and reinforce each other. And it reminded me of a, I honestly can't say which of the zillion books I read during my, my, my PhD in Leadership and Change program. But I was talking about transformational change and the analogy was concrete and rainbows. You know, you need, you need rainbows to maintain the vision and the bigger picture and the spiritual and the light. But then you need the concrete because you need to really build, build. Yes, some something tangible. So. Oh, I. Laura Bratton: Love that image. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. When you said grit and gratitude, it made me think of concrete. Laura Bratton: Oh, I love rainbows. Dr. Kirk Adams: As, you know, two, two dynamics that work together. So would love to hear a little bit more about your thoughts on how grit gratitude worked together. Laura Bratton: And then can I use that image? I'll give you credit. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, well, I took it from someone else and I can't attribute it, but I should look it up anyway. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how grit and gratitude reinforce one another and work together. Laura Bratton: Yeah, that's a perfect analogy because we need them both and sometimes one more than the other. And yet. But it can't be all one or the other. So let me explain how I define grit. So growing up in the well, my context was growing up in the South. So I'm just speaking from my context. Grit was suck it up, get over it. Don't acknowledge your pain. Certainly don't show others your pain and just move on. How I've learned to define grit is Acknowledging and validating our feelings and still choosing to move forward. So when we have those sadness, anger, grief, tears, it's not jumping over it and saying, stop, stop, get over it. It's saying, feel that. Acknowledge that as your real lived experience. Then choose to have the chassis, the shrink to move forward. So again, a real world example for me, it's not okay when I'm feeling anxious, stopping, or running my anxiety for the rest of the day. It's okay. I'm feeling anxious. Let me acknowledge that and still choose to send that email, make that phone call, even though it makes us right? Like you, you still just do the hard thing. So it takes tenacity and determination and courage to do that. Yet as the concrete. Yet with that, the gift of gratitude is that balance because it acknowledges, okay, in my anxiety, I'm feeling really, really anxious about the situation, and I'm thankful I can get through this because blah, blah, blah. So let me give you a real. That sounds good and great, but let me give you a real tangible example. When I'm feeling anxious about a situation, or let's just say specifically an email I have to send, I grit looks like acknowledging that anxiety. Laura Bratton: Gratitude looks like saying, okay, I'm still anxious, even though I'm not acknowledging my anxiety yet. I'm grateful I have the technology that allows me to send this email. And so I'm going to choose in the email even though I'm still anxious. So the gratitude does not cover up. Needing the strength, needing the courage, needing the tenacity. What it does is gives us perspective. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. That's great. And that's you, you elaborate on that in your book? Laura Bratton: Yes, absolutely. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, let's let's talk about speaking. I know you're a speaker and you you enjoy speaking and you are a high impact speaker. So would would love to just get a little taste of the types of things you talk about and who, who are your ideal audiences, who you most resonate with? Laura Bratton: So who I speak to are most is associations. I also speak a lot to corporations. And specifically I work with each organization on what is the change that they're going through. From two perspectives. And then I'll give you a real world example of just recently. So Sometimes I speak to organizations and I'm empowering the leaders to be the grit and gratitude. For example, I recently spoke to a real estate association, and so I was empowering those brokers, those real estate agents to be the grit and gratitude as they work with their clients. And then other times, like a few weeks ago, I was speaking to an association of athletic directors, and I was also empowering them to have grit and gratitude as they go and work with their coaches, work with their athletes. So specifically with this association of athletic directors, the challenge they're experiencing and facing is, is clearly as their athletes are social, you know, the pressures of social media and all the pressures of if you play baseball, you know, it's assumed you're going to the NBA or if you play baseball, you're on the MLB, you know? Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, yeah. Laura Bratton: The intense pressure that our youth are under. These athletic directors have to be equipped with the resources to help them help their youth navigate through these new challenges, the changes that they're constantly experiencing. Yeah. So it was my they were bringing me in. It was my goal to speak on how do you navigate through on a day to day basis? How do you apply grit and how do you apply gratitude to empower your youth? Yeah. So that's, that's just one specific example of how I tailor it to the individual needs of the organization. So the foundation is always the same. Navigating through change with the grit, with the gratitude. And yet it looks different for each organization on what their specific change is that they're going through. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. And I'm, I'm guessing the master's in divinity program at Princeton had not had a lot of totally blind students in their program. So I, I'm very, very interested in hearing about your experience of in graduate school as a blind person. And I assume you got to practice a lot of grit and gratitude in, in that process. Laura Bratton: So I was the first blind person to go through the program. So you're right, they had not had many. They had not zero. Right. So yeah. Okay. So I want to talk about how the grit and gratitude applied there. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Laura Bratton: Being the first, they didn't know what resources I needed. They didn't know how to adapt. They didn't know how to adjust. They didn't know how to make this program accessible. What does she need? So what it taught me. And the gift that it gave me being the first, is it taught me how to advocate for myself. So it took deep grit to advocate and to learn. Hey professors, I need my textbooks in PDF document. This is why. Because I use the software on my computer to read all the documents. And also, I work. Once I have my textbooks in PDF, I would work with the professors on, you know, I need double time on my testing, right? Like I need my testing either in Braille or then most of the time I did, they would just email because again, there was no testing center because I was the first one. But, you know, to send to have my test in accessible word doc format. And here's why I need double time, not so that I can use my notes and look up the notes and all that, but because of the time it takes using a screen reader. So again, just recently going blind, I didn't know how to advocate for myself. So that Princeton gave me the opportunity to learn how to advocate for myself. How do I clearly communicate my needs and state? These are my needs. These are why my needs. And here's how we'll work together to do it, to accomplish this successfully. So that was a deep gift of learning that advocacy because I'd never had to do it before. I didn't know, I didn't know what I needed, right? Because I was sighted, so I didn't know it. Right, right. But that it was extremely hard being the first, but yet it was a deep, deep gift because it taught me how to advocate. Dr. Kirk Adams: That's great. Laura Bratton: And the other the other gift was they didn't give me any like, oh, sweetie, we'll grade you less. Not as hard. Less rigorous on this paper. This exam. Because you're blind. Sweet girl. You know, like you'll just pass. They still, you know, grading my papers and tests just as hard. Dr. Kirk Adams: Which expectations? Laura Bratton: Exactly. Which was also a deep gift. Yes, because it taught me. You're still you. You are. Can I use this blindness as a crutch or as a victim card or as a path card? Yeah. Like you're still the same standards as every other student. So it, it was a great gift to me being the first on so many levels. Yeah, that could be a whole nother episode. Dr. Kirk Adams: And then I can remember, I remember being very grateful when I was, I started my PhD program in 2010 when I could actually find the article in electronic format. Oh yeah. Gateway. And I just read it with jaws without having to go through a bunch of steps. I always experienced immense gratitude. Laura Bratton: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, Laura, I'd love to just give you an opportunity to let people know how they can get in touch with you how they can find your book. How can people reach out if they would like to talk to you about coming to speak to their organization. You mentioned associations are particularly interesting to you. So how can people get in touch? Laura Bratton: The best place is my website. https://LauraBratton.com has all the resources on the speaking the book, the coaching, connecting on LinkedIn, emailing me. It's all it's all there. That's the best place to go. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay, well, I will say the same. You can find me at my website, which is https://DrKirkAdams.com, and sign up for my newsletter and follow me on social and reach out if you want to talk to me about any aspect of accelerating, accelerating inclusion of people with disabilities in our society, in any aspect of society, and working together to create conditions for people with various impairments to thrive in this world. So thank you, Laura, for being part of the podcast today, and look forward to the next episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.DrKirkAdams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Cheryl Mitchell, Co-Founder and CEO, Access Forge

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Cheryl Mitchell, Co-Founder and CEO, Access Forge https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-04-28-2026/ [https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-04-28-2026/] In this heartfelt episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk welcomes Cheryl Mitchell [https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylamitchell/], co-founder and CEO of Access Forge [https://accessforge.com/], to discuss Belonging by Design [https://belongingbydesign.com/], a new initiative aimed at helping faith-based communities and places of worship become genuinely accessible to people with disabilities. Cheryl traces her journey from volunteering as a reader for the late DC accessibility leader Don Galloway in the mid-1990s, through two decades managing federal disability initiatives in government contracting, to becoming a caregiver for her aging mother, an experience that surfaced everyday accessibility gaps in churches, hotels, and airports. Out of those observations, she and longtime collaborator Mark Bartlett (formerly of AbleGamers) launched Access Forge in 2025 to focus on the cultural, hospitality, and faith sectors she saw lagging furthest behind. The bulk of the conversation centers on Belonging by Design itself, a faith-agnostic training course built to help senior leaders, staff, and volunteer committees operationalize accessibility rather than treat it as a Section 508 checkbox. Cheryl walks through the framework, forming an accessibility committee that includes disabled members, setting SMART goals, and stacking short-term wins (a more accessible website, captioned sermons, accessible parking, emergency planning for disabled congregants) before tackling longer-term capital fixes. Kirk and Cheryl reflect candidly on why faith communities often lag on inclusion despite their stewardship ethos, touching on hidden disabilities, aging congregants, veterans with PTSD, and the sobering reality that a single bad experience can keep a person with a disability from ever coming back. Kirk closes with a memorable personal story of reading the entire 26-volume Braille Bible as an eight-year-old at his United Methodist Sunday school in Silverton, Oregon, anchoring the episode's larger point that in troubled times, community matters more than ever, and faith-based spaces should be among the most welcoming places anyone can find. Learn more from Cheryl and AccessForge Cheryl and her colleagues at AccessForge have built Belonging By Design™ [https://accessible.faith/dradams], an online leadership training that helps faith community leaders turn accessibility into a retention and trust strategy. The program includes more than four hours of structured video content, downloadable tools, and a peer learning community, all designed for executive decision-makers at congregations, ministries, and denominational organizations. Preview the first two lessons free [https://accessible.faith/dradams], or explore the full program here: https://accessible.faith/dradams [https://accessible.faith/dradams]. Disclosure: This is an affiliate link. If you enroll through it, I receive a commission at no additional cost to you. I only partner with organizations whose work I believe advances meaningful inclusion. TRANSCRIPT: Advertisement: This podcast brought to you by Pneuma Solutions. Advertisement: I can't see it. Advertisement: ADA Title II has a real compliance deadline. April 2026. Public entities are required to make their digital content accessible, including websites, PDFs, reports, applications, and public records. If a document cannot be read with a screen reader, it is not compliant and if it is not compliant, blind people are still being denied equal access. For a clear explanation of what the rule requires, visit www.title2.info. It's one of the leading resources explaining what agencies must do and when. This message is brought to you by Pneuma Solutions, we have remediated hundreds of thousands of pages in days, not months or years, aligned with WCAG 2 AA guidelines at a fraction of traditional costs. Accessibility isn't a privilege, it's a right. Now that you know, ask your agencies a simple question, are your documents actually accessible? Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Doctor Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody to another episode of podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am that Doctor Kirk Adams in my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today I am talking to a new friend and colleague, Cheryl Mitchell. Cheryl is co-founder and CEO of Access Forge and Access forge has a new initiative called Belonging by Design that is in the world to make faith based communities and places of worship more accessible for people with disabilities. Say say hi, Cheryl. Cheryl Mitchell: Hi, Kirk. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here, and it's great to reach your community and talk about this wonderful initiative that we're this project that we're working on. Dr. Kirk Adams: I was introduced to Cheryl by Mark Bartlett, who was formerly the leader at Able Gamers, and he and I had several conversations and and one of them, he said, you really need to get to know Cheryl. So we had one phone conversation, and then we were both at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and sat my wife, Roz was with us and we sat and talked for an hour or so. Learned a lot about belonging by design. And I started to kind of peel back those layers of all that Sheryl's done in this space and all she's doing now. So she she is a real champion and leader and pleased to have you here today. And as we as we talked before we started recording, just would really love to hand you the microphone and find out what your journey has been like so far and what's motivated you to get involved the way you have. Tell us about Access Forge. Tell us about Belonging by Design. And I'll I'll reserve the right as the host to pop in with questions as they occur to me. Hopefully they won't be too random, but looking forward to talking for the next half hour or so. The floor is yours. Cheryl Mitchell: Sure. Well, how it all started was I was a volunteer through Columbia Lighthouse for the blind in the mid 90s. And so the person who I was assigned to was Don Galloway. So Don had introduced me to this whole world of accessibility. I'm sure you know him because many people knew Don Galloway. Dr. Kirk Adams: I do, but others might not. So do you want to give us just a little. Cheryl Mitchell: Don Don was very active. Don Galloway was very active in the DC community. He was the accessibility coordinator for the DC government responsible for, you know, a lot of the accessibility issues that were happening back then. And I was assigned to him to read to him. I used to volunteer and I would read to him in the evenings. And I worked in marketing and social research. I was working at, I believe, the Institute of Medicine back then over at the National Academy of Sciences. And then I transitioned over to, you know, some.com companies and unfortunately got laid off. And Don would tease me and he'd say, I really could use your experience as a as a consultant and helping me do some work with like the statewide Independent Living Council and all this different stuff in addition to volunteering. But I could actually pay you while you're looking for work. And so we would joke about it. And then that's how he introduced me to the world and introduced me to a lot of people. And I ended up I still volunteered for him, but I ended up taking a job in government contracting for an organization that managed a lot of federal contracts that supported people with disabilities. Cheryl Mitchell: And so I spent the, the next like 20 years managing those federal initiatives from supported employment to some small projects to ticket to work to some of the work at nighter all the heavy hitters, office of disability employment policy employment for stuff like that. So I spent a lot of years advocating for people with disabilities, building partnerships with a lot of the disability organizations and nonprofit organizations that support people and quite really enjoyed it. And then my parents became ill and I was a caregiver, as well as working full time and supporting my family. But I discovered things as they were aging. I was trying to support them as a caregiver, and I was discovering how the systems were failing. And so I definitely wanted to make make a difference and try to improve those systems. So fast forward back in 2025, I really wanted to have my own consulting firm. And I had talked with Mark and we had, we were talking about some ideas. Dr. Kirk Adams: And how did you and Mark. Cheryl Mitchell: Mark. Mark and I met many years ago probably in the early 2000 through a former colleague that I used to work with when I was in marketing they worked together and she had mentioned to Mark. Mark was getting ready to start Ablegamers. And she said that he was doing this on the side and he was trying to, when he started the organization, he really was trying to help a family member get access to more resources. And she was like, you two need to meet because Sheryl's in the disability space and knows everyone from the federal contractors on. So we ended up going to lunch one day in Tysons because we both worked in Tysons Corner, because we both were government contractors. His background is was QA testing and stuff like that. So we ended up meeting and having lunch, and then I started rattling off like all these resources and people he should talk to and, you know, and he was just like, oh my gosh, you're a wealth. You're a wealth of knowledge. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, yeah. Cheryl Mitchell: I've worked I've worked for all these government contractors. And I, I'm in all these meetings and I, and I manage it just so happened that I was managing this contract called the Interagency Committee on Disability Research. So it was all the agencies that fund or conduct research for people with disabilities. So, you know, that covered everybody. So all these meetings you'd be in, you'd hear of people. And so I started to tell them like, well, there's stuff here at NSF, there's opportunities. You really need to connect with these people. So that's how Mark and I met. So we met over 20 years ago. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. 20 years later, you're still working together. Cheryl Mitchell: I know we're yeah, we're still we're still in the field, still advocating just different in a different space now. Dr. Kirk Adams: So you, you brought us up to 2025 when I interrupted you. Is that when Access Forge started? Cheryl Mitchell: Yeah, we started Access Forge in 2025. And and it was the reason why I wanted to start was because I knew that there was work that I really wanted to do, that I wanted to specialize in. And since I was older, I really wanted to focus on the work that really had meaning for me. In my experiences, especially as a caregiver for my mom. So I wanted to work more in the cultural institutions, the hospitality side airports as well as faith based organizations, because I saw firsthand the struggles, the struggles of me as a caregiver for my mother, as well as seeing other people with disabilities struggle in those areas. And I really wanted to make some improvements, work with organizations to improve the systems so that they understood how to address people with disabilities because sometimes you're not, you know, they're not seen. And so I was just based on experience that I had with my mother. I remember I had an issue at a hotel chain. I'm not going to bring up the name and working through that through corporate office. And I'm thinking to myself, they need training, they need training, but they need training from a holistic level from the front desk to everyone. So that they understand, they understand this and and so based on those experiences, based on experience at the airport, etc., I wanted to make, I wanted to make a difference. Dr. Kirk Adams: So, so then as we talked about in January at CES, belonging by design is a specific focus in the faith, faith space, space. Cheryl Mitchell: Right? Access Forge. Yet one of the areas that we focus on at Access Forge is the faith based sector. Because we noticed that faith organizations are probably one of the last groups that really aren't addressing accessibility. They have the best intentions in terms of belonging and inclusion, but a lot of them don't really understand the friction points between like their digital front door or their physical, physical access of the buildings. And so as I was a caregiver for my mother, my mother was a former minister before she transitioned. And we used to talk and I used to bring her to church and I would notice issues at her church and I would bring them up and I would we would talk about them. And I wanted to really have the church understand how there's just small changes they could make that were low cost, that didn't cost a lot, but they just more of a training that they were more embracive and empathetic and understanding to everyone. And so based on the conversations, observations that I had, I had other friends that mentioned to me in passing that had disabilities, that they were having issues in their church. And they'd asked me, since I had an accessibility background, would I talk to their church? I ended up talking to a church, you know, a couple of different churches and explaining how they could, you know, their senior leadership. I go, these are changes that can happen. It's not looking at the individual. There's probably more people in your church that have visual impairments or different issues. Cheryl Mitchell: They have hidden disabilities, not just physical disabilities. And there's better ways of addressing and making sure that you're being truly inclusive. So we kind of went through a lot of this information and I realized I'm like, I need to package this in a way where it can be training. So that I can actually package it and be able to share it with as many faith based organizations. So Mark and I were talking. We developed this framework with all the different modules, and we wanted to make it in a way where there were resources and tools. We talked about, you know, funding opportunities in the event that churches wanted to do long term fixes. We wanted to provide them with short term wins so that if they were, you know, if they couldn't afford to do anything right now, they could look at their website, make some changes, reach out to their congregation, ask some questions, ask how they can better support them. You know, talk to young parents with children with disabilities. Talk to the aging, the aging worshippers, because there are things that can be done. And we wanted to make sure that we kind of packaged in a way that made sense. So we created this course called Belonging by Design, which helps faith leaders operationalize accessibility, because a lot of them think that accessibility is like section 508 compliance. It's very technical, and we're looking at this from the whole list of are you treating people? Is everybody experiencing the same thing, regardless of their disability. Cheryl Mitchell: So when they're at church, are they able to follow along? Are your, you know, sermons caption is there. You know what I mean? So there's little things that we are trying to talk about or is everything has captions or if they have if they're just being inclusive in their whole training, holistic training from the greeters, people meeting you from the front door or parking, is there accessible parking? How much parking is there? Visitor parking, etc.. What happens if there's an emergency? How would you how would you handle that? If there are people with disabilities that aren't familiar with your setup or your organization? So we really kind of went through some topics and came up with a very robust, robust framework and training. And we wanted to make sure that it was faith agnostic because we recognize that people with disabilities belong to all faiths all over the world, and we knew that we were not trying to interfere with the ministry of the church. We were giving them the foundation for them to do the training, to be able to train volunteers, to be able to identify a project plan and how they can work through tackling some of these issues. And so we didn't want any faith to be offended because it's like, you can still continue with your teaching, teachings and doctrine, but this is just a holistic approach of how you can operationalize faith. Accessibility within your organization. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So, so I was thinking, of course, prior to getting into this conversation with you about a couple of things. You know, I know during the civil rights era, there were statements made talking about black Americans and white Americans at the most segregated hour of the week is 11 to noon on Sundays, because that's when people were at church. It was not a great, great segregation voluntary at churches. But then you know, I was at a Seattle Cultural access consortium all day deep dive into access of the arts. And one of the speakers was indigenous, Native American from a tribe in this area here in the Seattle area. And they were talking about at our powwows, you see people in wheelchairs and you see walkers. And it's because we we don't leave auntie at home. When the family goes, everybody goes. And then I was thinking about that and then I was thinking about, you know, we we know something like 70% of disabilities are non-apparent. But if you if you look at disabilities, depending on as you know, you used to work for the government. Dr. Kirk Adams: But there's different statistics that tell different stories. But you know, something around 20%, you would think of the population as some sort of a disability. So that would mean something like 20% of the people attending a worship service or a faith, faith based place of worship, you would think something like 15, 20% of the people in that room would be people with disabilities. But I'm guessing we're not seeing that demographic representation in most congregations. So I just wondered what your reflections would be on any of that, on the intersectionality of disability and, and other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.. Right. And I guess, I guess my cynical self would, I don't, yeah, I guess cynical self would say, well, the church should be the most inclusive place. You should see the greatest percentage of people with disabilities. You know, at, at, at a worship service. So just, just your thoughts, any of that, any of this cultural, any of this rooted in other social psychosocial dynamics. What do you think about that? What do you think about this stuff? Cheryl Mitchell: Yeah, it's interesting because I was at a church and disability conference that was held in, in the DC area last week. So I was interested to hear their conversations of churches, some organizations, some ministries that are wanting churches wanting to do better. But what I found interesting was that with the church, it's in the church. And if and if it's a Christian based church, they are using the Bible as reference. So there's stories of people with disabilities all throughout the Bible. Just saying. And what I find interesting is like you said, There are people that are attending services, and I think a lot of churches aren't asking the question of, you know, who's who's in the congregation, how best they can support. And you would think that a church where they're based on stewardship wanting to serve the community that they would be already pro, you know, pro reactive in making sure that our doors are welcoming, they're open, they're inclusive, we understand or we're making attempts to understand how best to serve our community. And like you said, Kirk many churches, they think they're doing something, but they don't realize that they are until somebody actually brings it up. And what I heard at the conference, some parents that have children with disabilities that have more of the hidden disabilities, they're not comfortable talking with senior leadership. But there were pastors and senior leadership people at the conference. And even through the research that we did before we created the course that there are, there are many that are interested. Cheryl Mitchell: And let's face it, at this point in 2026, you know, somebody who has a disability, who's aged into a disability or has a temporary disability due to having surgery, having, you know, knee replacement, hip replacement, or, you know, like my mother having she acquired some disabilities later on in life. There's, there's dementia, there's Alzheimer's, there's all of these things, there's all different types of people who are walking through veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. A lot of, a lot of trauma has happened in people's lives and they go to church for comfort. But what's ironic is a lot of times people with disabilities, they may go, but if they have a bad experience, They don't. They no longer attend. They won't attend again to that church and they may just stay home. And this is a form of community involvement. And you would think the church would be really behind this, which many like I said, some are changing, but as a whole, a lot of faith based organizations are behind. And that's why this was something kind of, of since I was a caregiver for my mother, I worked in the field. I wanted something, a product where any faith based organization could use. We didn't want to interfere with their ministry. Right. You know, but you need you need to address, you need to address these concerns. Dr. Kirk Adams: So the Belonging by design course that you've created that will help senior leaders, administrators to understand better how to create an environment where people would be Encouraged would be comfortable and self disclosing that, you know, this is the impairment, whether it's visual hearing, cognitive mobility. And I would have a better, better experience. If you knew about this, if you took this into account, if you made this small change. So as part of it, just to open the listening you know, I would, I would think a lot of people in leadership positions and faith based communities are volunteers. They may not have experience in, in these spaces like, like you and I do. So just really curious about the content of the course and the learning outcomes and who's, who's the, who's the intended audience, what, what are, what are the changes you hope to be making by offering? Well. Cheryl Mitchell: The goal, like we, we broke it into different modules. So module one the goal is that either a faith based leader or a faith delegate staff, or even if they delegate some volunteers because, as you know, most churches operate on volunteers. That's why we when we were setting this up, we wanted to make sure that there were resources and tools because we noticed that there was a lot of a lot of, or like the work that we saw. They were talking about the why, but they weren't talking about how like how to implement what to do. And we wanted them to have a strong foundation of building spaces where access leads to belonging and belonging leads to engagement and engagement fuels growth. So we wanted to make sure that, like the first two lessons that they can unlock for free, anybody who goes to our website, it's accessibility dot faith, where they can see the belonging by design, all the different chapters of the training. We talk about the learning objectives, things like that for each section and how long it is. And then of course, how many resource tools and handouts are associated with each section. So for example, if a if a pastor is not, say he doesn't have a accessibility volunteer committee and has no idea what to do we wrote out like step by step in terms of what to do, like how to make a request, you know, over, you know, over your weekend service or through your newsletter or whatever, and then how you would motivate and empower the volunteers. Cheryl Mitchell: We talked about the roles, why it's important that they see your support from the very beginning, and they see how you're going to be supporting this, even if you're delegating it to a small group of committee, you'll identify a leader, and then there will be additional people that will be a part of that, and how you need to have people make sure there's representative people that have disabilities within the within that group so that you get that feedback. And then of course, how they would check in, how they would check in with the pastor because the pastor is always busy. You know, the senior pastor is busy, so he can't be involved in everything, but he still has a responsibility to check in to make sure that things are moving forward. And we're teaching the, the staff, the volunteer staff how to stay focused. What are Smart goals? You know, focus on the project. Don't get out of scope. And we teach them basic project management tools within the resources so that they can have successful wins and actually have little wins and be able to work on work on projects, smart goals that can be done in 30 days. So the short term goals versus long term goals. Dr. Kirk Adams: So you mentioned you mentioned the website where people can go. I'm going to put a link in the show notes of this podcast that people can use, and please do. So I'm guessing if someone is listening who is part of a faith based community or has a family member who has a disability, who would like to be more involved, they can take this information to the leadership of their congregation and urge them to click on that link and download those first free two lessons and hopefully take it all the way through as. Cheryl Mitchell: They can listen. They can unlock the first two lessons with their email address so they can listen. And then of course, we encourage, we encourage, you know, family members, you know, if you belong to a faith based organization. Yeah, there are eight minutes a piece, the two lessons that you can unlock. Okay. But at least this way you're hearing this and there's a lot of information, and then you can bring this to your faith based organization and share it with them because they're able to purchase it or, or anyone can purchase this training. They can purchase it and and get all the resources and tools. And the other benefit is that when someone, when someone does sign up, there's access to the online community for a year. So we also, in addition to all of this, we have special guests that speak. So there might be somebody that speaks on Alzheimer's or whatever. It's all based on we, we, we provide different programming, but we also want to hear from, from everyone who's part of this part of the community because we want to make sure that we're serving the community. Dr. Kirk Adams: I just had a flashback. I was probably eight years old, and my parents would take us and drop us off at Sunday school. They didn't attend church, but I think they appreciated the. Some time away from their children on a Sunday mid-morning. But it was the United Methodist Church in Silverton, Oregon. Okay. I later became the part of United Methodist Youth and was part of the Bell Choir to middle school, which was awesome. But the, the, the congregation gifted me a Braille copy of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, 26 Braille volumes. Cheryl, which took up a whole shelf in our entryway of our home. And being, being a blind kid, living out in the country with often not a lot to do and a little access to all the Braille I wanted. I read that, I read the I read it old testament, new testament. And I know sometimes I had mentioned people would mention, do you read the Bible? And I'd say, well, I read it. They say the whole thing. I said, yeah, I guess the whole thing when I was eight years old, I think. But how long did it take? Do you. Cheryl Mitchell: Remember how long it took. Dr. Kirk Adams: You? A whole summer, for sure. Probably longer than that. I remember yeah. Dug. Dug. Right in. But this is tremendous. I think not to get political, but in these troubled times, we need community more than ever. People need to be able to find places of support and solace and hope and faith based communities provide all that and more. So what you're doing is, is really important. And again, let people know one more time how they can get involved with belonging by design. Cheryl Mitchell: Sure. They can go to our website. They can either go to https://accessforge.com. That's the name of the company. But we normally use access access access https://accessible.faith [https://accessible.faith] you can go directly to. Yeah https://accessible.faith [https://accessible.faith]. You can go directly to https://belongingbydesign.com [https://belongingbydesign.com]. And we have we have videos. We have we have a lot of information about the framework. And like I said, you can view the whole course outline and it talks about the learning objectives for each one. Dr. Kirk Adams: And we're making it easy, easy for you. There's a link in the show notes of this podcast. So go. Go for it. Check it out. Refer people to it. Bring it to your faith based community. Encourage people to get involved with making your communities more accessible for everybody. And with that, thank you so much, Cheryl. If anyone wants to get in touch with me, my website is https://DrKirkAdams.com [https://DrKirkAdams.com], and you can sign up for my email newsletter there. You can reach out to me the contact form. I'm happy. I'm happy to talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere without making the world a more accessible place for people with disabilities and more inclusive place for everybody. So thank you, Cheryl. So let's talk again and we'll check on your progress. A few months down the road. Cheryl Mitchell: Yes. Thank you so much. Dr. Kirk Adams: Thanks, everyone. Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.DrKirkAdams.com [https://www.DrKirkAdams.com]. Together we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Anthony Candela, Retired Vocational Rehabilitation Professional, Disability Inclusion Champion, Author & Essayist

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Anthony Candela, Retired Vocational Rehabilitation Professional, Disability Inclusion Champion, Author & Essayist https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-04-21-2026/ [https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-04-21-2026/] In this warm, wide-ranging episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Kirk reconnects with longtime friend and colleague Anthony "Tony" Candela [https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyrcandela/], a retired vocational rehabilitation professional, author of four books, and prolific essayist, for a far-reaching conversation that travels from the state of the VR system to the shape of a well-lived blind life. They trade notes on what's changed (and stayed the same) over Tony's 50-year career in the field, including today's more holistic, whole-person approach to serving blind consumers, the near-universal acceptance of assistive technology on the job site, and the very real threats now facing the $4-billion federal vocational rehabilitation system as government shutdowns and efforts to dismantle the Department of Education loom. Tony shares his own journey with retinitis pigmentosa, the late-in-life lesson of learning Braille at 34 (and his emphatic advice that kids be taught Braille young), and the first step he recommends for anyone newly navigating blindness: reach out to the consumer organizations, the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind, because they will welcome you unconditionally and teach you how to learn. The conversation also turns personal and literary. Tony walks through his four published books, Vision Dreams: A Parable; the memoir Stand Up or Sit Out: Memories and Musings of a Blind Wrestler, Runner and All-Around Regular Guy; the essay collection What Should Not Remain Silent; and the new romance-adventure novel Fire on the Desert Sands, co-authored with his partner Juliana M. Kotis, and explains the roughly weekly essays (66 and counting since late 2024) he publishes on his Facebook page. Kirk connects Tony's athletic background as a wrestler, runner, scuba diver, and skier to his own doctoral research on blind professionals in corporate America, where sports and other physical pursuits consistently surfaced as the crucible that built a strong internal locus of control. Tony pushes back gently on the "superhuman" framing of high-achieving blind people, offering instead the governing philosophy of his memoir: don't shy away from the struggle, go through it, and get good at going through it. The two close with reflections on how far accessible technology has come since the slate-and-stylus, paid-reader days of the 1970s, a shared appreciation for the organized programs and support systems that still matter enormously, and a mutual call to keep defending the institutions that make blind employment and full participation possible. TRANSCRIPT: Advertisement: This podcast brought to you by Pneuma Solutions. Advertisement: I can't see it. ADA Title II has a real compliance deadline. April 2026. Public entities are required to make their digital content accessible, including websites, PDFs, reports, applications, and public records. If a document cannot be read with a screen reader, it is not compliant and if it is not compliant, blind people are still being denied equal access. For a clear explanation of what the rule requires, visit www.title2.info. It's one of the leading resources explaining what agencies must do and when. This message is brought to you by Pneuma Solutions, we have remediated hundreds of thousands of pages in days, not months or years, aligned with WCAG 2 AA guidelines at a fraction of traditional costs. Accessibility isn't a privilege, it's a right. Now that you know, ask your agencies a simple question, are your documents actually accessible? Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody to another episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am that Doctor Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle Washington, Washington. And today I have the pleasure of reconnecting with a longtime friend and colleague all the way across the country in the Bronx. But Tony Candela is here today. Tony is a retired vocational rehabilitation professional and a true leader in the disability community. A champion for disability inclusion, he is an author of both fiction and nonfiction, a prolific writer of essays, both of us share time spent at the venerable American Foundation for the blind AFB and Tony. Say, say hi. Anthony Candela: Hello, everybody. Dr. Kirk Adams: Great. Great to hear your voice, Tony. It's been too long. You are always so good about texting me on special occasions. Holidays. I am a very poor correspondent. Back to you. But I do appreciate you so much getting in touch and so glad you reached out that we're going to catch up in public here on on the podcast. But for those of you who don't know me, I am Kirk Adams. I am a blind person, have been since age five when my retina is detached. I had the honor of serving as president and CEO of the American Foundation for the blind, and prior to that, those same leadership roles at the lighthouse for the blind here in Seattle. My PhD is in leadership and change. My doctoral dissertation was called Journeys Through Rough Country, an ethnographic study of blind adults employed in large American corporations. And I currently am managing director of my own consulting practice, Innovative Impact, LLC. And I've also started a new, a new adventure stepping into the role of executive executive director for a nonprofit based here in Seattle called the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. So really looking at inclusion from a 360 degree view and thinking about race and gender and disability, sexual orientation and economic status and immigrant status and veterans and intersectionality and really finding it very inspiring to be involved with some, some great inclusion, diversity and equity champions. So I think Tony, you, your journey has been one of inclusion and fighting, fighting hard and consistently for inclusion of people with disabilities and people who are blind in particular. So I would really just like to hand the talking stick to you. And I always say Tony, where have you been? Where are you now? Where are you? Where are you headed? What? What's working for you? And what challenges are you? Are you facing these days? So the the floor is yours. And I'll, I'll reserve the right as a host to pop in with questions which may seem random at the time, but as they occur to me, I will ask. So Tony. Yours. Anthony Candela: Thank you. Kirk. I appreciate it, and it sure is good to hear your voice again. We really are old friends and colleagues, and your your newest initiative is a quite gutsy adventure given the political atmosphere out there, especially at the federal level with regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion. So God knows we need all the help we can get to not only to obtain, but as your institute sounds like, to sustain. Yes, this kind of effort. And it's it's just a tough time. And, and I have Dr. Kirk Adams: My, my dad, who was a high school basketball coach, would often say the times get tough, the tough get going. That's right. Anthony Candela: Yes. Which reminds me, my New York Knicks are fighting already for their lives. And it's only the first round of the playoffs, but we'll just keep that off to the side for now. Dr. Kirk Adams: How about that? Cj McCollum of the Atlanta Hawks. Tony. Anthony Candela: Yes. Dr. Kirk Adams: Unfortunately he he took it to him last night. Anthony Candela: He he. Yes. And that it's a hard way to to lose when you've been leading the entire game. And then at the very, very end of the game, you lose the lead and you lose the game. So it'll, it'll test the mettle, I guess, of both teams. So we'll just have to keep watching that. Dr. Kirk Adams: There you go. Anthony Candela: As for me, I'm in. I'm in right now. I'm in kind of a retirement. I don't even want to say lol. It's more like a waiting and watching game. I was a part time employee for the last few years with the Mississippi State University, the National Research and Training Training Center on Blindness and low vision out of Mississippi State University. And I ran a program where we trained existing new blindness professionals in how to do good rehabilitation with blind, visually impaired consumers. And we gave them four graduate courses and that the program did not get refunded. And so here I am in retirement just waiting to see what might happen next. I don't have to really actively pursue anything. So if something comes up where it's a natural fit for me where, where they, you know, they would value what I bring to the table, which is a, you know, semi-retired person who's been around a long time, but I'm still semi-retired. So they, they, they'll probably have to see something in me as we talk. And maybe then I'll join, I'll join whatever that effort happens to be. But right now I'm happily I'll call myself in a retirement lull. Okay. I am pursuing my, my I guess my, my, my latest vocation is, is writing. Anthony Candela: So I do a lot of writing and over, over the last seven years, I've published one, two, three, four books. And the most recent one is, is a romance adventure novel with, with a co-author who happens to be my, my significant other. Juliana. And so she and I have published a book called fire on the Desert Sands. So I'll just get in my plug for that one book. Yeah, it's out there. And at romance adventure all, all the, you know, the things that the formula requires and, and also a bunch of science that I think maybe would add to the demographic because it's about a, a young woman archaeologist going to try to find going to a dig a dig site and to try to find some of the secrets of some ancient civilization. And and all of the intrigue as there are bad guys that don't want them to find this information and there are good guys and there all sorts of things that go on in the book. So it's, it's good. It's a fun read. At least I think it is. And I've only read the book about 150 times. Dr. Kirk Adams: Say the title one more time. Anthony Candela: Fire on the desert sands. Dr. Kirk Adams: On the desert sands. Anthony Candela: The desert sands. Got it. Yeah. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So I, So I did have the question pop into mind when you talked about Mississippi State and National Research and Training Center on blindness and low vision. And I had the great experience of being on their advisory council for a time. And they they do great work. But you were teaching people who are new to blindness field professionals and rehabilitation. So you've been in the mix for a good long while. So I'm curious, what are, what are 2 or 3, however many things that come to mind that have changed in the space from when you first got your, your, your feet wet in vocational rehabilitation to the point where you're newly, you're teaching people new to the field. What, what are, what are some big takeaways as far as things that have changed? Anthony Candela: I think things that things that you would, you would expect actually, you know, the, the, the system, the system is operating very similarly. Now to, I hate to say it 50 years ago when I entered the field, that the overall system is working about the same. But the you know, the, the, they're much more liberal in terms of well, diversity, equity and inclusion. It includes, it includes how we, you know, how we work with the people who need our services much more of a well-rounded approach to the people. Not, not just that they have a vision impairment, but that they, they are a whole person. I think there's much more awareness in these younger professionals to, to that more holistic approach. Okay. They, they get to use and help, help you know, to procure the technology. We don't have, we don't have to fight the battle of justifying the value of and the, and the, and the usefulness of spending money on technology because the technology is so obviously helpful, especially for the job site, especially for, you know, the world of work that you're not justifying or they, they are not justifying nearly as much as we used to have to do back in the old days when people didn't understand the technology. The heck, we hardly understood it ourselves back then. So, so there's that. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Anthony Candela: They, they now the people that take that, that took the course that, that I offered kind of are a selected group because they literally aggressively applied for and sought admission into this program, which was going to make them have to take four graduate courses distance education online format over a one year period, which really probably doubled their workload between what they do for their jobs and then what they had to do for the classes, etcetera. And so they were the dedicated smart people. I was very gratified in the dozens and dozens of students that I came across in the few years that I was there. Just really, really dedicated, smart people. Dr. Kirk Adams: That's great. Anthony Candela: We're still, we still have a predominance of females in the field. And but, but there's enough males to, you know, make me remember that, you know the field does attract both genders. So that's, that's a good thing. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes. Anthony Candela: And and yet, you know, sometimes they get bogged down in some of the bureaucracy that I remember from way back when. So they, they do have to, they do have to do the paperwork and they do have to follow the rule structure. Only thing I can think of that's a little different today than back then is we didn't have the federal government threatening our funding as much as, I mean, I, I had I had a couple of people who got furloughed right in the middle of our class, and they got furloughed for like an entire month because of some, some you know, flow of money problem or something that the feds were saying to that particular state. Right. And so we, we didn't quite have as much of that back in the day as as we do today. And and then also, I never thought about worrying about whether the system would survive back in, in, you know, up until ten years ago, I didn't think to worry too much about whether the system would survive. But now, now we even have to worry about the, you know, how the system survives and the shape that it will take and whether, whether we, we will get more restrictive in how we serve and who we serve. All those things that I say are the good things that happened over the years? We're kind of sliding backwards a little bit, or at least I'm afraid we're going to slide backwards a little bit. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, for for those of you who don't know, most of you probably are. We're talking about the vocational rehabilitation system, which is under the big umbrella of the Department of Education, which is under a sub sub umbrella of the Rehabilitation Services Administration. Federal dollars flow to the states, who then put resources to good use to support people with disabilities, blind and other significant disabilities in achieving or maintaining employment. And it's about a $4 billion budget. So there's lots of resources and lots of staff. And like many federally funded programs, the government shutdown has become a popular political strategy in recent years. So many various programs, including vocational rehabilitation, do get affected. And then there's the, the, the efforts to either dismantle or greatly reduce the scope of the Department of Education. So of course, that's worth a threat of a big change looms. So we we will here at, at podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams and at my website, doctor adams.com. We will certainly advocate for maintaining a national focus on rehabilitation services for people with disabilities, as only 35% of us or so are in the workforce, which is about half that of the general population. And I always say our our employment outcomes are either twice as bad or half as good as the general population, whatever, whatever metrics you're using and not of course, not only detrimental to people with disabilities who aren't engaged in the workforce and would like to be, and the resulting poverty and the stresses and strains and adverse life impacts that poverty have. But we're also robbing our society of the contributions of really uniquely talented, motivated people that can really bring great resources to the community. So that's my, that's my little synopsis of the VR system. And Tony, I, I invite you to add on to that or you started to talk about your essays, your books before I interrupted you. Anthony Candela: Well, first of all, very well put, very well summarized. And I have, I did notice one thing that I think has been the same for a long time when we were, I was working on some other projects with the National Research and Training Center, helping them out with some of their, their research projects because that's their main job at the National Research and Training Centers. They, they run studies applied applied research studies to see like, what are the best methods to to provide good service, educate employers, etc.. They adapted a job skill, a job placement skills training program. And then I was helping them test run the adaptation. It was a mainstream program. And what, what I noticed in that was how alone a lot of a lot of us are if we, if the best thing that could happen to us and it's just, it's just you know, what, what happens to us in our lives, whether we have this or not, but the best thing that could happen to us is if we have a really good support system around us. And there are a lot of people who don't have a whole lot of, of a support system around them or don't have any support system around them. And and they're out there and they're alone and they're blind and they don't they don't know. They don't they don't know how to bolster their skills until they get into organized programs. And I think, I think there's still a tremendous need for organized programs, because it's not the kind of thing you're just going to absorb from the thin air. Dr. Kirk Adams: Right? Right. So, you know, I mentioned at the top of the top of our conversation that I've been blind since I was five when my retinas detached. So I went from sighted kid to blind kid really quickly. So what, what's your journey as far as your visual impairment goes? Anthony Candela: Born legally blind, partially sighted due to retinitis pigmentosa, which is a deterioration of the retina over the years. And there's different forms of it. The form I have is kind of your classic standard form of retinitis pigmentosa. So I had straight ahead vision only with eyeglasses. Best correction. I actually was improved to 2070 vision, which meant if I sat in the front of the classroom, I could see what the teacher was writing on the chalkboard. And for a long time I could read regular books. Not as fast as as a regular person could, but I could do that. So I was blessed with the with the fact that I could learn visually for a long time. And then as I got into late high school, early college, the eyesight was getting worse. And I started using alternative techniques back in my day when this was happening like around 1970 when this was happening, 1971, when I started college what we had were basically recorded books. Yeah. And an open reel tapes, which eventually became cassette tapes. And then, and then I think CDs for a while, and now everything is downloaded. Praise the Lord. So, so so that that and and faster, faster to obtain the materials you need to learn. So that that was what happened to me. And then then I just got less and less visual. And by the time I was in my late 30s I had given up my eyeglasses. I had given up really trying to do anything visual at all. I was pretty much totally you know, non visual. I learned Braille when I was 34 years old. Never got fast at it. Big, big regret. Rule of thumb, if you can get a kid to learn Braille when they're young, even if you have to force them a little bit. This is my opinion. Make them learn Braille if they're going to need it later. Because then they have a chance of getting fast. I never got fast, but. Dr. Kirk Adams: It's a brother. Anthony Candela: Yes, sir. So that's it. And then I was basically, I've been, like, totally blind you know and because it progressed so slowly, I don't actually know when I became totally blind, but for the last 25 years, for sure. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Okay. Anthony Candela: Yeah. Dr. Kirk Adams: Thanks for that. So every, every, every journey is different. So. Yeah. It's I'm, it's interesting. Thanks for sharing that. So essays you mentioned before we started recording that you sounds like every week or so you're generating an essay and I love, love to hear about that and what the, the depth and breadth of what you're contemplating. And as you write where people can access that wisdom. Anthony Candela: Sure. Right now I'm just posting to my Facebook account. So, so not not really out there yet, but I, I did start writing a collection which, which went from 2021 to 2024. And I actually published that in a, in a book, I self published a book called what should not remain silent, which is might not remain. What should not remain silent. Okay. Basically that's my excuse for opening my big mouth whenever I want to. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay, I like it. Anthony Candela: So, so that got published self published in 2024. And then I started writing again. I started writing more essays. So I just just took a look. As a matter of fact, I've got 66 essays written since late 2024. So almost, almost one a week. And the topics range from there's a, there's an awful lot of, of political topics mostly focused on our president and the people that he surrounds himself with and how they are functioning. And a lot of it has to do with how they're functioning not necessarily what their politics are. Like. I, I just posted an essay the other day that that had to do more with the, like the emotional of our president and, and, and some of the people around him especially you see it when like right now he's probably got gotten himself under more pressure than he probably ever believed he was going to going to be under. And he's done it to himself. And, and so there, there's, it's not so much anybody who reads my essays know exactly where I stand politically and how I feel about everything. But I don't, I don't push that as much as I do, you know, what are some of the underlying things that are going on here and the people that he surrounds himself with, it's like birds of a feather stick together. So, so if you, if you think about what those birds all look like, they, they do look a lot alike in, in terms of their kind of their, just their personality functioning and their, their character. I've also. Dr. Kirk Adams: I just, I was just thinking about the book, I'll get the title slightly wrong, but about Lincoln's cabinet, a team of rivals or a. Yes, yes, a group of rivals. He intentionally brought in people who had very differing viewpoints. Anthony Candela: Yes, I have read that book. Dr. Kirk Adams: I guess it was. I guess he was a decent president, Abraham Lincoln, so. Yes. Anthony Candela: Well, he was willing. Dr. Kirk Adams: He was. Anthony Candela: Yes. Because he was willing to do the hard thing. He was willing to have people, people who basically. Not only did they occasionally fight with each other, but they also. They also told him of, you know, their differing points of view. And if they disagree with him and they they made him hear the hard things. They they were not they were not sycophants at all. They they were they're individuals who told him what they thought he needed to hear. Dr. Kirk Adams: All right. Well, I just I just opened up Bookshare and I went to search and I went to author Search and I put in Anthony Candella. And I say, I see vision dreams, parable. I see stand up or sit out memories and musings of a blind wrestler, runner and all around regular guy. I see fire on the Desert Sands by Anthony Candela and Julianna M Kotis. Anthony Candela: Yes. Dr. Kirk Adams: And I see what should not Remain Silent by Anthony Candela. So those are your books. So you are. You're a wrestler, as was I. So talk to me about that. Yeah. And running. I ran cross country. You know before I ask you to talk about that. My dissertation I mentioned earlier and I you know, talked to blind people who self-identified as successfully employed in large companies whose names we would all recognize. And first I asked them, you know, what, by what criteria did they self-identify as successful? And everyone in some form or fashion said money, income, a salary financial freedom, you know. Enough wherewithal to be able to make life decisions and, and make decisions on how to use their resources. But then I, I asked people you know, what were the, what were some of the factors or what were the factors that they felt led to their ability to succeed in corporate America? And almost everyone talked about the strong sense of agency or strong internal locus of control, that they felt that they were able to forge their own path, that they could overcome problems, that they could figure things out, you know, as opposed to a strong external locus of control where people think, you know, things happen to me and I can't do much about it. Dr. Kirk Adams: But then digging deeper, they almost all talked about some event or series of events that gave them that strong internal locus or sensitive agency. And they are almost all physical. Many times outdoors horseback riding, rock climbing, downhill skiing. One, one guy who's totally blind and has a computer science degree and a law degree said, you grew up in a neighborhood where the boys, the 12, 13 year old boys would do these bicycle tricks, ride their bikes and jump off ramps and stand on the handlebars. And he said he he did that with the guys who ended up in the emergency room a number of times. But just curious about your reflections about that, your long career and vocational rehabilitation around that sense of agency or internal locus of control and perhaps reflecting on your own experiences with with, with sports and the other, the other corollary is another factor people talk about was being part of a team, whether it was a choir or a sports team or a debate team. So thoughts? Anthony Candela: Yeah. Well my dissertation psychology dissertation, which I didn't quite finish was, was on a, a different a different concept in the, in the same realm as as locus of control. It's called self-efficacy. And, and it was, and, and the dissertation was on exercise behavior as a, as a correlate of self-efficacy among blind and visually impaired persons. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Anthony Candela: And then what happened was I, I two, 2 or 3 things happened all at the same time. I, I had a second mortgage, I kept getting promoted and I didn't have a caseload that was going to be able to easily reach into, to get my test subjects and, and a few other things that I could have easily overcome all of those, but I had been going to school part time for so long that I just. I needed to stop. But there therein lies kind of the, the, the genesis of, of the memoir stand up or sit out. Because it is about life lessons learned through being a blind athlete. And so all the, all the sports that I mentioned in the title wrestling and running. But there, there's other sports in there too, like, like downhill skiing with a special, special you know, skiing organization cross country skiing, scuba diving, things like that. I was a certified scuba diver at one time. And, and all the adaptations. I even even published an article on that scuba diving way back in 1984 in the Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness. Okay. It's it's there somewhere. I just but, you know, you know, I mean, they didn't I don't know what I would do because the computerized diving watch was not really that powerful then. So given that there wasn't that technology. Yeah. Diving watches and it told you some information, but it wasn't so much that you couldn't just make shift with hand signals, tactual hand signals and things like that. Anthony Candela: You didn't feel like you were missing anything. You didn't, you didn't do a lot of the calculations to see like, how long can you dive at a certain depth? You had to do those before the dive. You know, with, with pencil and paper, literally. Now, now the technology is so good that I, I, I could get lost trying to figure out how to adapt to technology, but that so, you know, as an example of sometimes when you didn't have the technology and you were forced to do things the old fashioned way, you just went ahead and did them, you found a way to do them. And, you know, and it's just an example of, you know, like you mentioned, teamwork, how to work with you know, on the wrestling team, you're with your buddies. And when you're running, even when you're running, if you're a blind person, you're with a running partner and that team work. And et cetera. Et cetera. So all, all this was in, in that memoir, that memoir was an awful lot about the last, the last part of the title, by the way, is wrestler, runner and all around regular guy. And the most important thing there, my philosophy is that we, we must, we must be careful not to super humanize some of us high achieving blind people. Anthony Candela: Because then we're not, we're not the best role models, though it does tell you what is possible. It does. And that's a good thing. But a lot of people will feel that maybe that low self efficacy or that, that, that, that external locus of control. So to bring them along, we have to, we have to kind of make sure that we, we let them know that not every, you know, we're not all perfect and we all struggle. And the key is to go through the struggle. Do not shy away from the struggle. Go through the struggle. That's what you have to get good at. Get getting through the struggle. And then if you, if you pursue like that, then then the good things are probably going to happen to you. And I wanted that message to be out there that, you know, we're just all regular guys in the end. And don't, don't super humanize us too much. Because then once you start doing that, you, you almost like dehumanize us. And I didn't want I want to make sure that we stay very, very human. And it's, it's coming from me. It's my personal, you know, way of looking at the world. And so that that's been like an overriding philosophy is, is like go through the struggle all the time. Dr. Kirk Adams: You talked earlier about people who are isolated, who don't have support systems. It's obviously much easier to go through a struggle if you have a support system. But you also talked about the fact that organized, structured, intentional programs can provide people with levels of support they wouldn't otherwise have, which I imagining lends great greater, greater possibility of successfully making it through the struggle. Yes. So if people are listening who perhaps are trying to figure things out, maybe new to being visually impaired or have someone in their family who's new to the situation, or like my parents had certainly never met a blind person before. My retinas detached and I became one. And we, we, we were not connected to communities or, or resource resources. I was fortunate, so fortunate to be that my family is directed to the Oregon State School for the blind, where I received so many gifts of high expectations and blindness skills and in that sense of agency. But the recommendations for, for people who are trying to figure this blind thing out. Anthony Candela: Yes, yes. I mean, the easiest one, the one that will work and, and is reachable is not, is not necessarily, you know, go to the VOC rehab system. Not, not maybe not the first thing, the first thing I would recommend are the consumer organizations, National Federation of the Blind American Council of the blind, and they have the national chapter, the National Organization, and they have the local chapters. Because they will start piling information onto you. And you know, like with the organized programs one of the valuable things that you start learning how to learn, I mean, in the beginning, you may be in a vacuum, you may have no clue about anything at all, and all of a sudden you're getting information and you're also getting instruction formal or informal in, in how to start to problem solve and also how to start to learn how to function as a, as a blind person. And, and, and learning how to learn is a, like teach a man how to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. Well, there you go. Learning how to learn is about teaching a person how to fish. So I first, first step, I would go to the consumer organizations because they will welcome you. They'll welcome you. They're not going to give you, you know, say, well, you're not eligible for our services. Like. Dr. Kirk Adams: Are you blind? Come on in. Anthony Candela: Are you blind? Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Anthony Candela: Do you think do you think you're blind? Well, we'll take you. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, do you think you'll become blind? Yeah. That's right. So aacb.org for the American Council, nfb.org for the National Federation. And I think you're spot on, Tony. Anthony Candela: Now I want to tell you about my my favorite most recent essay. It's on a lighter note. And it's just, it's a fun thing. I, I recently read a book which now they just made into a movie. It's a science fiction movie. Because I love science fiction and it's called project Hail Mary. Dr. Kirk Adams: So I've been hearing the buzz. Anthony Candela: Yeah, I'll, I'll email you a copy of the essay. Kirk because you'll just have fun reading. But what what it's what, what the essay is doing is essentially it's a book review. It's a, it's a review of the book. And it mentions that they had made, and it's the same guy that wrote project Hail Mary is the same guy that wrote The Martian, which was out a few years ago. It's the same guy and Andy Weir WEIR and so my, my fun thing that I have done in the last couple of weeks is to write a book review on Project Hail Mary. And if you're into science fiction and you are willing to stretch credulity a little bit you, you have to, you have to, you have to give a break to the author. Dr. Kirk Adams: Suspension. Suspension of disbelief. Anthony Candela: Yes, yes. Especially if you think about how they they travel at almost the speed of light to, to do some of the stuff that they're going to do in the book. That's you know, a long ways off in terms of our ability to do things. But you, if you, if you suspend the, you know, credibility just long enough, you will enjoy that book if you like really hefty science fiction. Dr. Kirk Adams: All right. Anthony Candela: Because this author does a lot with math and science and all that stuff, but I only bring that up not so much to promote the book and the movie and all that stuff. It's more to say it's just a fun thing that I will let myself do once in a while. Just just for the heck of it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Cool. And people can find essays on your Facebook page. Is that under Tony or Anthony? Anthony Candela: Anthony R Candela. Yeah. Dr. Kirk Adams: Anthony R Candela. So people go to Facebook and follow you and they'll get. Yeah, about every week they'll see some of your writings. Yes. And again, I read the titles of your four books. I did not. I actually did not did not know about the writing side of your life. So this has been very enlightening for me. And I know I've, I've respected you greatly over the years. I was certainly not, not, not, not too many years, but some years behind you and really understanding the community the various organizations, how all the systems work. And I learned a lot from you. When I, when I first got engaged in the, in this work and I really appreciate that. And Anthony Candela: I, I was working for the state of California and you were working at the Seattle Lighthouse, I think when we first made contact. Dr. Kirk Adams: That's right. Anthony Candela: Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Kirk Adams: But there's there's a lot more work to be done. I will say you know, you're reflecting on technology. When I, when I I started my undergraduate work in 1979, so a few years after you, but I took my notes every day in class with a slate and stylus. And in my dorm room in the evening, I would recopy them on a Perkins Brailler. And I sometimes could get my, I was at econ major. I could sometimes get my textbooks from recording for the Blind and dyslexic, usually read by a volunteer who was not an econ major. So the descriptions of the, the graphs were usually pretty, pretty interesting. And then you know, paying being fellow students who needed to read the same books, paying, paying them something like four, 25 an hour, whatever the minimum wage was so that they could read the books. So if you're going to be blind, now's a pretty good time as far as technology goes. And the promise of all the technologies that are emerging. So I. Anthony Candela: Would, I would say what you could do today is you could record the lecture and then run it, run it through some software. Yeah, it'll upload it, it'll, it'll give you, it'll give you a Microsoft Word document. It'll, it'll give you something that's Braille convertible. You'll load it to your high speed Braille printer or just to your device. Dr. Kirk Adams: Just read it on Refreshable Braille Refreshable Braille device. Anthony Candela: Right, right, right. What am I saying? High speed rail. You don't need that. You have a refreshable Braille device. And And there you go. And you could go off and just drink a lot of beer while all that's going on. Dr. Kirk Adams: Exactly. Okay. Hear that? Hear that? Kids? Advice from Uncle Tony. Use your technology and have fun. Anthony Candela: There you. Dr. Kirk Adams: Go. So let's let's have you back again. Tony. And just great catching up with you. The time flew by. So how can, how can people Facebook. Best way to connect other ways, ways people can get in touch. Anthony Candela: Yeah, I don't mind people email. I don't mind giving out my email address. I do it it's, it's anthonycandela 66@gmail.com, so anthonycandela66@gmail.com, and the website is https://AnthonyRCandela.com. Anthony R Candela.com. Dr. Kirk Adams: Perfect, and if people want to get in touch with me my website is https://DrKirkAdams.com, DrKirkAdams.com. I have a newsletter you can sign up for that, which I would appreciate. And you could also look at the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. The website there is I number four, SDI dot ORG. https://i4sdi.org. And I really appreciate everyone listening to another episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. Very glad to have my friend and colleague Tony Candela as my guest today. Tony, have a great rest of your day and a great week. Anthony Candela: Thank you Kirk. It's been so much fun. Look forward to the next time. Dr. Kirk Adams: Me too. Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.DrKirkAdams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Eddie Pate, IDE Practitioner, Author, Speaker, Consultant and Board Member, Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion (ISDI)

🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Eddie Pate, IDE Practitioner, Author, Speaker, Consultant and Board Member, Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion (ISDI) https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-04-16-2026/ [https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-04-16-2026/] In this thought-provoking episode of podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with Eddie Pate [https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddiepate/], longtime IDE practitioner, author, speaker, consultant, and fellow ISDI [https://i4sdi.org/] board member, to trace Eddie's journey from Army brat and All-American Humboldt State football player to senior inclusion, diversity, and equity roles at Microsoft, Avanade, and Amazon, where he ultimately led IDE strategy for a one-million-person worldwide operations organization. Eddie explains why he intentionally leads with the "I" in IDE, framing inclusion as the true engine of sustainable change, and he unpacks his signature "pebbles and ripples" philosophy: small, intentional, daily inclusive behaviors, interrupting the interruption of a woman in a meeting, being deliberate about who sits on an interview loop, expanding "who's in your kitchen," and "spending your privilege" to create visibility for others, that compound into lasting cultural and systemic change. From there, Eddie previews his book, Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders: A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging, walking through his 2IL model of inclusive leadership and the book's structure around the full employee life cycle. Dr. Adams shares a personal "spend your privilege" story involving his daughter and a car purchase, and the two turn candidly to the current climate for IDE work. Acknowledging the real harassment practitioners are facing, Eddie voices renewed hope grounded in collective resistive action, peaceful protest, local community engagement, and, above all, voting in November. The episode closes with a teaser for a follow-up conversation on power, privilege, meritocracy, and intersectionality, plus details on how to reach Eddie and order the book at https://inclusivepebbles.com [https://inclusivepebbles.com]. TRANSCRIPT: Advertisement: This podcast brought to you by Pneuma Solutions. Advertisement: I can't see it. Advertisement: ADA Title II has a real compliance deadline. April 2026. Public entities are required to make their digital content accessible, including websites, PDFs, reports, applications, and public records. If a document cannot be read with a screen reader, it is not compliant and if it is not compliant, blind people are still being denied equal access. For a clear explanation of what the rule requires, visit www.title2.info. It's one of the leading resources explaining what agencies must do and when. This message is brought to you by Pneuma Solutions, we have remediated hundreds of thousands of pages in days, not months or years, aligned with WCAG 2 AA guidelines at a fraction of traditional costs. Accessibility isn't a privilege, it's a right. Now that you know, ask your agencies a simple question, are your documents actually accessible? Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Doctor Kirk Adams. Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody to another episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. I am that Doctor Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today, I have the pleasure of introducing you all to Eddie Pate, who is a long time practitioner of. I'd. And e some of us say DEI. So I will ask Eddie to talk about why he prefers I'd and e as a title of his work. He's a longtime practitioner and author. We met when I joined the board of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion here in Seattle. And Eddie is a board member. And Eddie, say, say hello, and I'll be back to you shortly. Eddie Pate: That was great. Hey, Doctor Kirk and audience it's it is wonderful to be here. I can't wait to have our conversation. Dr. Kirk Adams: Great, great. And for those who of you who don't know me. I am currently the managing director of my consulting practice, which is Innovative Impact LLC. And I'm also privileged to be in the role of executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. We'll talk about that a little bit more. I'm the immediate past president and CEO of the American Foundation for the blind, Helen Keller's organization. Prior to that, I had again the honor of leading the lighthouse for the blind here in Seattle, where we employed 250 blind and deaf blind people in a variety of interesting businesses, including aerospace manufacturing. My, my, my doctor comes by the way of a PhD in leadership and change from Antioch University. And my, my dissertation is called Journeys Through Rough Country, an ethnographic study of blind adults employed in large American corporations. And I know, Eddie, you do you do quite a bit of work in that corporate America space. So I bet we'll talk. I bet we'll talk a little bit about that. But really just wanted to invite you into a conversation. That was great to hear about your journey. Where, say where you've been. Where are you at? Where are you going? What's working for you? What are some challenges you're seeing? And we would really like to hand hand the talking stick to you. Eddie Pate: Well that sounds great. Thank you. You know what? I'll. I'll start with kind of my journey and where I've gotten where I've gotten is a lot because of where I've been. And I think that's probably what you're getting at as well when you're asking this question. So I'm an Army brat and I'll start there. My dad was in the Army for 22 years. I was born in Frankfurt, Germany. My mom met my dad when she was over there. She's died young. But she met my dad when she was working in Fischbach, Germany, where she was born. And my dad was a soldier, my mom was German, and they met. And the next thing you know, they're married. They have three kids. And the whole spiel after moving back to the United States. I was born in Frankfurt, Germany. We moved back. We moved all over the place. I think part of my kind of passion and understanding and love for difference and unique experiences and moments that matter has to do with me being an army brat, a military brat, traveling everywhere. So if you fast forward a bit, my dad retired in 1980 and and moved up to the Bay area and lives in Union City, which is in East Bay. And because of that, I ended up going to the Humboldt State University where Kirk, you'll you'll laugh at this, but I think you might know this about me, I studied wildlife management. Eddie Pate: Yeah, I, I really thought I was going to be a field wildlife biologist. But at the same time that I was getting my degree in wildlife management, I played football at Humboldt. And when I first went to college because I was only 17 when I went, I just turned 17 and started college. I was I hadn't hit a growth spurt. I was six feet tall, £160. You know, showed up to, to play football at Humboldt. And within the first year I gained three inches in 40 to £45. And so I ended up having some real good success as a football player. I was an All-American a couple times all West Coast receiver, all this kind of stuff. So what that ended up doing was leading me into what I had hoped to be a long NFL career, but unfortunately two ACL tears back in the late 80s. Ended that. So where I was in the Chargers camp, San Diego Chargers back in the late 80s, torn ACL. Ended up having a negotiated separation. Got surgery, spent a few years trying to hook up with a number of teams and then finally realized that my medical history was just an anchor on me, so I hung up my cleats. And then I started down the path of management and leadership kind of roles. And I started back at Humboldt, actually as the assistant director of admissions and school relations. And and from there I was, I was married at that time and we were living in Humboldt where I was working. Eddie Pate: My wife Val was working. We had a little girl and, and when she was six months old, we had both finished our undergraduate degrees and a master's degree. My master's degree was in sociology, comparative race and ethnic relations and social psych, and my wife was in social geography. So we meshed really well. Right. And we and we had a major professor say to us all right, you two need to go get PhDs and doctors doctorates and teach. And so Val and I left Humboldt, which is in very Northern California, and we went to the University of Washington here in Seattle, and that was back in 1993. Doctor Kirk So I'm, I'm aging myself in a big way. And so started the doctoral program in 93. We had a second kid in 98 Arthur. So we have one daughter and one son. And and then I finished my PhD in 2000 and my PhD was in sociology as well and was comparative race and ethnic relations and social psychology. So and then I was, it was at that point, I wasn't sure if I was going to go down the path of academics and academia and be a professor, or if I was going to go into the corporate space and you know, the path ended up pointing and I'll leave the history of why I decided not to go into academia unless you want to, you know, want me to elaborate on that further? But I decided to go the path of the corporate space. Eddie Pate: And I ended up meeting an incredible woman, Laverne, LaVonne, Dorsey, and LaVonne introduced me to who was the head of at that time, diversity, because that didn't say Dei or. Yeah, inclusion, diversity back then. It was just diversity at at Microsoft. And his name was Santiago Rodriguez and Santiago was incredible. And Santiago and I clicked and he knew of a role, in at Microsoft, but not in the HR within the HR function, but within the line of business. And that was really important because my first taste of I'd and E work inclusion, diversity and equity work was in a line business where I reported directly to the senior leader of a, of a group called the Enterprise and Partner Group. And that was Microsoft's. And I think it is still today. That was that was Microsoft's primary sales arm for not only the United States, but global. So here I was in a situation where you had to be, you know, culturally competent and understanding global differences in norms and cultures. And my job was to make sure that people understood I'd and E or diversity back then, as we said, principles and, and and dynamics. And so it was a great starting point for me. And then I'll speed up. And so then. Dr. Kirk Adams: No, that's fine, but I'd love to. Let's, let's pause here and talk about why. Why you prefer I'd and d as a as a descriptor of the what you practice. Eddie Pate: Absolutely. So look, I said d e and I for several years and it just started dawning on me that while I think diversity as, as, as, as you think about diversity, equity and inclusion, so diversity being the differences that people bring to the table, it's who you are, right? It's your background, your experiences, all those things which make up your diversity. But what I was, what I really wanted to emphasize and show was the power of really thinking about inclusion as the true mechanism for having and making change. And so and by putting I, the, I first and I'd and e and then diversity second and wrapping it up with equity. I was emphasizing the inclusion piece. It's not that the diversity piece wasn't important, but I, I used to talk and tell people, you know, diversity is about, you know, the diversity part is about, I don't know, 30%, right? 60% of what we should be doing is inclusion and inclusive activities and behaviors to make people who you bring into your organization feel like they belong to feel comfortable, to have a say. And so the inclusion piece and putting the I first just emphasized that point. And then the equity piece wrapped it up and, and, you know, made this just this wonderful, you know, perspective of thinking about how do we do this work? It's not the, it's not the strategy of bringing people in that we should be focused on. We'll do that. But it's how do we make them feel included? And how do we literally look at whether we are achieving an equitable outcome with our goals and our strategies? And that's why I lean towards I'd and E and, and gotten many people over the years to convert to that perspective as well. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, I, I, I like it. No, I I'm against exclusion. I'm for inclusion. So I like, I like having that up front. Eddie Pate: Put it, put it first. Eddie Pate: My friend put. Eddie Pate: It first. Yeah. Dr. Kirk Adams: So just a quick question. So Lavon Dorsey is a name that really rings a bell with me. And what, what what was Lavon's role when you were connected? Eddie Pate: Lavon was in in Microsoft, and she was not she wasn't a recruiter, but she was a, a, a leader within the HR function. And, and I ended up meeting Lavon and she was a great connector for me in getting me to meet people at Microsoft. And we just hit it off when we met. And she wanted to make sure that I was connected in. And then again, Santiago Rodriguez, who we referred to as the Pied Piper of diversity back then. Eddie Pate: Incredible. Eddie Pate: We followed him everywhere. Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, I want to give a little shout out to my friends over across the lake in Redmond, Washington, at Microsoft. So when I was at the lighthouse for the blind here I walked into an organization that had a relationship with Microsoft already, and a gentleman named Howie Dickerman, who became a board member, was in charge of one of the work groups developing Excel. And he thought to himself, you know, I think blind people will probably want to use this. And I don't know anything about how to make it accessible for them. So we got up the phone book and looked up blind and found the lighthouse for the blind and drove over and introduced himself and you know, set up a user testing and getting input. So my Microsoft has really done some things around I'd and e that I think are exceptional. And you know, they have Several hundreds of of blind individuals on working, working at Microsoft. And they're not they're not just in accessibility roles or ID and roles. They are coders and programmers and managers and marketing people and HR people. And they. Eddie Pate: As it should be. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yes. So they've they've included people with a wide variety of disabilities throughout their organization. And they're a shining example. So I just want to point that out. Eddie Pate: And I. Eddie Pate: Love that. And one of the things that I like about Microsoft back then too, is, you know, as you bring different people onto, onto your teams, you know, there was an, there was an assessment that was made. And if you needed any accommodation, there was actually a part, an organization within Microsoft. And I'm assuming and hoping it's still intact where you would just go and you have a chance to you know, sample and see the type of assistive technologies that you may need and use them. So it was a central function for managers and hiring managers to come in and do this. And I thought that was I thought that was incredible. And part of the diversity team work that we did. I started out in PG, but within a year and a half, they pulled me into the the broader function and I was promoted and I had global role then for the diversity team. And part of what we did is we had one. We had one person on our team who was responsible for us working with people with disabilities and accommodations and assistive technology, and making sure that we worked in people with disabilities into our strategic approach to what diversity is. And it wasn't just about black people and women, as we used to say, right? Eddie Pate: It's just like not just. Eddie Pate: About race and gender, right? It has to. Eddie Pate: Do. Eddie Pate: With veterans, you know, status. It has to do with even size, right? It has to do with, you know, and with people with disabilities and veterans and, and, you know, and, and LGBTQ. So we, we really made sure that we had a part, you know with, with people with disabilities and, and, you know, assistive technology, it was, it was a great way to start my career, I think. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Then what next? Eddie Pate: So after Microsoft, I, I ended up being head hunted out and I moved to Starbucks and I was at Starbucks just a couple of years. And I have to say, and it's, it's no, it's, it really isn't a knock on Starbucks, but it just wasn't what I was looking for. I found it to, it was it took too long to get things done. You had to have meetings to have meetings to decide who's going to have a meeting and then move in that kind of thing. And, and after being at Microsoft, the pace of work is so much faster that it really was grating to have it just be so kind of slowed down and bogged down. So I actually left Starbucks and started my own consulting company, which I had for three years. Back then I did consulting for three years and was getting my feet wet, learning what it means to be a speaker and a consultant. And then I had held off a company called Avanade several times throughout those three years saying, no, you know, I'm not interested in jumping back into the corporate space, but at one point I, you know, they came to me and said, look, we really want you to come join this company and help us design and move globally and inclusion, diversity and equity strategy. Eddie Pate: And so I ended up joining Avanade and I was the vice president of inclusion, diversity and equity for them for five years. It was an incredible role because it really was Avanade is very much a global company, and so I had opportunities to travel abroad and really think about the, you know, I'd and e from a, from a global lens. And then after Avanade, I was headhunted out to Amazon, where I was the director of inclusion, diversity and equity for worldwide operations. And it was one of the groups at Amazon where, and you'll know the group because it's the one that has all the fulfillment centers, distribution centers, the airplanes, the minute you are, you know, any family member hits, you know you know buy and the product is sent to you. That's worldwide operations. So and, you know, I joke with people all the time, Doctor Kirk that you know, it's this tiny organization that I was responsible for. I had 18 people on my team at the largest and we were responsible for 1 million people. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Eddie Pate: So it was incredible. So, but it was again, it was a, it was a really important experience for me because it had not only could I build on all the past experiences that I had, especially the Avanade one and the global nature of it at that point. But you know, it's, it's, you know, it had such a global feel. I had, you know, I had multiple trips to India, to Singapore, to throughout Europe and just had a real strong responsibility of driving inclusion, diversity and equity across a broad network of individuals, different cultures, different backgrounds. And, and when you have that, you have to figure out how to make it work and how do you scale? And that's, that was a lot of my job is to help figure out how do we scale to a million people? Yeah. So it was, it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Was my my mind boggling. For me. I mean, I, I managed an organization with 400 people, but a million, a million and scaling and communicating and getting shared language and shared values established seems monumental, but I'm sure very rewarding. Eddie Pate: It was rewarding. So that's the that's my that's kind of my corporate career. And then I retired in 2020, which you know what, I can't believe it's it's been 5 or 6 years since I've retired from corporate. It's crazy. And but now I, I I, and one month after I retired, I knew I just wasn't, I didn't want to not do something. I wanted to keep my mind fresh. I wanted to make sure that I was finding those moments that matter and having an impact. And so I started educate speaking and consulting, and I've been doing consulting work and speaking keynotes, workshops. And as you mentioned earlier I wrote a book with someone who used to work for me at Amazon. Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay. Well, you know, I love and if you want to frame this any way you want, but certainly I'm sure you, you reflected upon some of these things in your book, and you do so in your speaking. But what are some of the key elements that people should keep in mind when they're really trying to create that culture, that inclusive culture in organizations? What are some either must must do's or please don't do's and, and, and maybe a couple of, of examples of good successes of people moving toward a more robust corporate culture around inclusion. And then you know, on a, on, on a little more somber note would love to get your thoughts on the current environment. Right. And some of the not full frontal assaults that practitioners such, such as yourself are living with. Eddie Pate: Yeah, absolutely. So you know, there are a number of things that I think people need to do to actually be impactful with I'd and e and this kind of work I have for years, I have heard people, you know, I've had leaders come up to me. Executives say, okay, Eddie, give me 2 or 3 things that I can do right now that just will move the needle. And in the back of my mind, I always go through my mind. I would say oh boy, you, you, you need a lot of help because there's, there's no one or 2 or 3 big things that anyone can do, in my opinion, that will actually have a sustainable impact and change for an organization in terms of wanting to become more inclusive or more equitable, or, you know, a company that integrates people from all over the planet in a way that's truly effective. I really believe, and this is a kind of a philosophy and an approach that I've developed over the years. If you really want to have an impact, you need to think about what are those daily practices that you could do that are inclusive and creates belonging. And and, and, and actually, this is one of those elements that is not overwhelming to do. You know, over the years, you realize, I've realized that everyone's so busy in the corporate space. And if you give them a big old project to do and, and they can't remove other pieces from their plates, how do they make room on their in their busy lives at work to do it? They don't or they don't do anything well, and they try to incorporate what you're talking about and they piecemeal it or do this. Eddie Pate: But I have found if you give them a daily practice that they can do. Right. You, you teach them what you know, intentionality is all about. If you, if you, you know, have them understand who's in their kitchen, right? As, as a, as a particular pebble that has an impact. If you and I can explain what all these are in a moment, but giving you broader context. So it is a matter of teaching people to do daily, inclusive, practical things that over time lead to systemic and cultural change. And let me let me give you an example of this. And then I can touch on some other pebbles and some other kind of guiding principles that I think are important for people to implement for I.d.e.a. To work. So one of the examples I often give and, and, and I'll set the context. The other, the other piece of context before I give you the example, is this whole notion of and dropping a pebble which causes a ripple. And so if you drop a pebble that causes a ripple, those ripples cause someone else to drop a pebble, which causes a ripple. Eddie Pate: And those ripples cause someone else to drop a pebble, which causes a ripple. And those pebbles are those small, inclusive activities or behaviors or actions that lead to systemic change. And my, my argument is that's ultimately what leads to us, to the change that we're looking for. And here's an example. So you're sitting in a, you're sitting in a meeting and, and we all, and especially the women who are listening to us or will listen to us in this. It will understand this example and appreciate it. Women are cut off 7 to 10 times more often than men are right in conversation. And so if you're sitting around a table in there and you're having this heated discussion, there's tense discussion and you're trying to get everyone's input and let's say Curt, you know, you know, Doctor Kirk, you, you cut off Barbara and you speak over her. And then in that very moment, if I drop a pebble by saying, hey, Doctor Kirk, why don't you hold off for a second? I want to hear what you have to say. But you you interrupted Barbara, and I really find what she says is super valuable. We'll get right back to you, but I want to make sure we. She has a chance to finish her thought, and then we'll get back to you. And so I dropped the pebble that causes a ripple. And so let's say the next meeting, you go to this next meeting and you witness the same thing where someone else cuts a woman off. Eddie Pate: And now that you've had this experience and you understand this, you might say, hey, hold on a second. Let me hear from her first, and then we're going to do this. And this is how people who keep dropping pebbles in ripples. So that's one little example. And if you think about a meeting of eight people, if eight people go to their next meetings and then you have, you know, it just extrapolates and gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and before long, it becomes part of the the culture of an organization to not speak over people and understand the dynamic of what we're doing. And in fact, I've done this very thing where I've said to make it a learning moment for people. I'll say, hey, Doctor Kirk, I, you know, I really want to hear what you say. But, you know, unfortunately, women are often spoken over way more often than men. So I just want to hold this off. Let's hear from her. And then I want to get your perspective. But in that moment, I also, not only did I allow or make it possible for her to speak, I made it a learning lesson for you. And so that's how this works. And there are just obviously hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of examples of what I just gave that. Dr. Kirk Adams: Shows the value. Eddie Pate: Of inclusive pebbles. Dr. Kirk Adams: And I assume the book has some some additional examples of pebbles that might, might, might be commonly picked up. Yes. Eddie Pate: And dropped in the water. Exactly. Dr. Kirk Adams: And. Eddie Pate: You know, I mentioned a few of them, like teaching people to be intentional. Right. Is this pebble that. So in situations where, you know, you have a true gap and this is one of those ways that you can have an impact, right? Let's say you have a gap on your team where you know, an HR functions, for example, usually about seven out of ten people in HR are women. Yeah. And that tends to be the data, right. But but that's for the lower levels of an organization. Suddenly when you get to director VP, you know, CHRO those numbers flip. Right. And so all of a sudden you have more men percentage wise in a lot of companies than women. So these organizations are led by men when the majority of the people in the organization are women. So intentionality would mean that we need to, the next time that we hire or we promote, or we think about who's going to join the ranks of director, VP and, and make up part of that leadership team. We should be very intentional in our efforts to make sure that we have women on the interview loop. We are. And if we. And so if it's not a if it's a company like Costco, for example, that likes to promote from within, then what you do is if, if you have senior managers are the ones that ultimately get promoted to be directors and then become part of that executive team. Eddie Pate: So at that, at that senior manager level, are you intentionally having development programs for women? Are you making sure that they have visibility to senior leaders and maybe having a mentor mentee relationship with senior executives on the on the leadership team. Right. With those high performing women. So in other words, you want to be intentional in how you approach these problems. And, you know, and when you get the pushback from some people saying, but isn't that reverse discrimination? Or are you, you know, and you just you just say, look, there's not reverse discrimination for one that doesn't exist. And the other piece is look at if we've allowed this dynamic to go unchecked and who keeps getting promoted and who keeps doing this are men. Because there's some biases, obviously maybe unintentional built into the process. So let's be intentional. Let's address that gap and then and make sure that we are giving women the equal opportunity and equity, you know, equitable opportunity to successfully compete for these jobs. So that's what I mean by intentionality. So it's a small tweak in how you think. And then I'll give you one other example. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Eddie Pate: That is a little, you know, easier to think about. I like the phrase who's in your kitchen? And we talk about it in our book. And actually it's got an interesting story. It is an expression that Doctor Martin Luther King coined and used back in the civil rights days. So he realized he needed to recognize who's in his kitchen, advising him and talking to him and helping him. Because who we invite into our kitchen are those people who we value, we feel comfortable with the ones that we are closest to are the ones in our kitchen. But unfortunately, we don't always have the right people in our kitchen to help advise us. And he recognized that he needed other voices that weren't just saying yes to him or agreed with him. So he needed other voices. So we teach people a simple pebble that you could drop that causes a ripple is how do you expand who your network is? How do you expand who's in your kitchen? And then not only how you expand who's kind of part of your permanent advisory group or who's in your kitchen. But how do you recognize in certain strategic decisions you have to make or problems you have to solve? Who you add temporarily to your kitchen to make sure you have a different voice. So it's just a technique for someone who's starting out to try to solve a problem, to say, okay, who's in my kitchen that I would normally use for this? Who should I be adding? It's an easy thing to do and it doesn't take it's not this prolonged three month activity. It could be something you can do in an hour and think about, man, you know what? I'm going to tap into Doctor Kirk because we definitely need some assistive technology and we need to be thinking about people with disabilities. So I'm going to make sure the doctor cooks in my kitchen for this discussion. Does that make sense. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah it does. And so you referred to the book a couple times. So let's let's talk about the title and, and what, what, what's involved in the book and what people will get out of it if they, when they finish listening to this podcast and order your book. What are you saying? Eddie Pate: So we'll start out with the title. So the title is Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging. And the guide part is very specific and very intentional. You know, it's almost like a, you know, a field guide for birds or mammals for you, you dog ear pages. And you go and reference things and you don't have to necessarily read it from cover to cover to understand what you're talking about. You can go straight to this piece. So we wanted to make it a guide for daily practice of inclusive leaders. And so the first half of the book, it really deals with the foundation of inclusive leadership. So we talk about, you know, why leaders are key to daily practice of inclusion. And we really tap into what's called what we call the 2IL model of inclusive leadership. And it's a model of inclusive leadership, right? And so I've had this model that I've developed over the years as a as an executive and leader in the indie space. And we have these pieces of this pie. And I would argue that if you want to be an inclusive leader, you need to think about cultural competence or humility. You need to understand ethnocentrism. And the part that that plays in how you interact with people. You need to definitely understand your unconscious biases and how to acknowledge that and work with that in your organization. Stereotyping we do. In my model there's a part that talks about micro-inequities. You might like microaggressions, micro invalidations insults, those kinds of things. Eddie Pate: And then the platinum rule is one of those pieces where, you know, you understand the golden rule is do unto others as you want done unto you. Right? Actually, we talk about shifting your thinking to the platinum rule, which is treat people how they want to be treated, not how you want to be treated. So that's a piece of the pie. And the last piece that we talk about in my in my 2IL model, is this whole notion of what it means to be a tempered radical. And that's a and, and, and so, and so I spend the first half, we spend the first half of the book talking about the two YL model, what leadership is all about. And then, you know, really helping people understand, you know, daily wisdom, daily courage, daily heart and structure and accountability. The first part. So that's the first half. The second half is, as the book is designed, is based off the life cycle of an employee. So from the moment you start recruiting an employee till you recruit the employee, you bring them in, it's you know, their introduction to the organization. You know, a, you know, we look at internal movement, we look at representation by level and, you know, and we look at how people leave the organization. So the full life cycle of the employee. We have inclusive practices in pebbles that fit every piece of that life cycle. So if you are sitting in a meeting saying, what can we do to be better about bringing more diverse talent in? You can go to the section on that. Eddie Pate: We have that deals with with talent acquisition and recruiting and what daily practices you have or, you know, what is it that we can do as a leader overall to be more inclusive? And you can go to the guiding principles section in the, in the back of the book that talks about lead with equity as the in game, lead with intentionality, you know, humanize your stories, really, truly listen all these things that are not super hard but are super effective that you can put into place, right? Using your voice keeping it simple, you know, understanding. Here's one for you, Doctor Kirk understanding the power of spend your privilege and, and people have, you know what I've said and I've talked about spending your privilege. People are going, okay, wait a minute. That's a cool sounding concept. What do you mean? Yeah. And the whole notion is we all have certain privilege and, you know, you have privilege just by being a part of an organization, period, in the story. Everyone has privilege, but you have to recognize that there are other privileges that are your basic that are very basic to you. Men have certain privileges that women don't. White people have certain privileges that people of color don't. Right. But a black male like myself will have probably more privileges than a black woman. Right? So the difference is how do I leverage what privileges I have to create opportunities for others. So spend my privilege. So I'll give you a perfect example of it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Eddie Pate: What I would do is since I was always in an executive role in leader in the company, I often spoke at, you know you know, all hands events or I had opportunities to speak to leadership teams or, you know, at a company meeting or something like that. But what I did is I said, I'm going to spend my privilege. No, I, I, someone from my team will speak, but it's not going to be me. I actually want my E to speak and have an opportunity to do this presentation, because she has aspirations of being a project manager and moving out of that executive assistant function. And so I want to create visibility for her. And I have the privilege to do that. So I spent my privilege, I enabled her to be on the stage speaking. And honestly, this is a true story from my Amazon days. And Cynthia is now a project manager at another company. But doing this, she's no longer doing e work. And it was the start really was her opportunity to be seen and visible in a different role outside of what people expect from her. So it's spending your privilege. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, I'm going to give you my quick spin privilege story, and it's a family story. So we're living in Arlington, Virginia, and the pandemic struck. Our daughter was living in New York City. She opened an office there for a Bay area startup. She fled the city. She came to stay with us in Arlington, which the pandemic soon, soon came there too. But she decided she was going to move to Los, move back to California. And she wanted to she wanted to buy a car in Virginia because it was cheaper to buy a car in Virginia and put it on a train than buy it in California and pay the taxes. Wow. Smart, smart, smart young lady. Yes. So I'm I'm married to an African American woman. I'm white, our children are biracial, and Rachel is a 20, 20 something lovely young brown woman. And she came to me and said, dad, here are the numbers of five Honda dealers, and I want you to call them and say, this is Doctor Kirk Adams. I want to buy a car, a Honda Fit. Da da da. Model number. I'm going to pay cash and I want to buy it tomorrow and see what kind of deal you can get me. So I did that. We started out at 22 something and ended up at 17, but I but I say that and I think about intersectionality. Maybe we can talk about that next time. Now, if I had walked in there with my long white cane I might have had a different result if she would have walked in there with her 24 year old young lady self, she probably would have had a different biracial self. Yeah. Right. So, so there, you know, there are I've experienced privilege as a white man. I've experienced lack of privilege as a person with a disability. So it's just, it's just a very interesting kind of shifting set of dynamics depending on context. And I'm sure you find that often in your work. Eddie Pate: Absolutely. And, and really the cautionary tale for both the stories that we've told about is how do you do this and not center yourself? So, you know, and I think that is I think that's a really important piece. And that's why I love that part is you didn't center yourself, you gave her the opportunity to do it. And it's the same way I didn't go up on stage and say, oh, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm going to give this opportunity to, you know, Cynthia, to speak and do this because that would be centering me. I simply create an opportunity for her to have visibility. So that's the cautionary tale is, is do it in the right way. Create visibility for others. We're not there to rescue anyone. I'm not there to be the great male savior or the great white hope, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. So I think your story is fabulous. I love that. Dr. Kirk Adams: I, I, I just thought you were so smart of her to understand privilege and affluence and power dynamics. Eddie Pate: And it's real. It's it is, it's absolutely real. And we, I, we'll have to come back on and, and, and talk about power and privilege and intersections of meritocracy and. Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. But I do want, I know we're coming toward the end of our time, but I, I, again, kind of addressing the realities of our current environment, any, any thoughts, reflections on how people can keep moving toward a more inclusive world and any, any bright spots you're seeing or just any reflections you have? Eddie Pate: Well, so yeah, I, yeah, my, my reflections on this is, and one I always like to start that acknowledging that it is truly painful. It is truly hard out there for people. And you had earlier you referenced people who do this work and what they were experiencing. I want to acknowledge that people in current ID and roles in companies are being chastised and harassed Asked and you know you know, talk down to and you know, I, I've even experienced this in my current consulting one of my gigs where I did a presentation. I do I do human centered leadership work too as part of what I develop and, and having someone just question, why are we talking about Dei? I thought we weren't supposed to, right? It's this kind of thing. So I want to acknowledge that piece first, that I understand the pain and the reality of it. Now I do have hope and, and I think if you had asked me six months ago or nine months ago, Doctor Kirk, I might not have had as much hope as I do now. Okay. And where that hope comes from, quite frankly, is the collective resistive actions of just normal human beings. Nothing was more impactful or empowering than the people in Minneapolis, the people in Minnesota, and what. For me, it showed that you can shift and block authoritarian and racist and sexist and homophobic behavior by collective action. I am, I've always been a believer of, of peaceful resistance and, and protest as well as being very intentional in our approaches with people who are negative. Eddie Pate: Right. And so for me, I am more and more encouraged because of, of that groundswell of support. If you look at the no Kings days going from, you know, a million people, I think in the first set of no Kings protests. And now the last one was 8 to 10 million. And now you have people protesting in starkly red states, red districts. You have people protesting no kings in Hungary. And look what happened to Viktor Orban, right? Yeah. So so you're seeing some movement in in a way where people are just saying, wait a minute, this doesn't feel right. And, and like, yeah, I get, I get upset and mad about like there, you know, you, I hear interviews with people saying, oh, it's just gone too far. What the, you know, we need to stop doing this. I know I voted for him and part of me wants to say, well, that's part of the problem, right? Is we knew what was he was going to do. He said it constantly, right? We knew what the Trump administration was going to do, but people still voted for them. So part of my reflection is I'll never truly understand that because it was so starkly clear what they were going to do and why people ended up supporting and voting for him. Right. Not understanding what he was going to do will always escape me. I'll never understand that. But I do have more hope. I encourage. I encourage people to look. It's too hard to constantly be worrying at the national level and trying to shift change up their way that way. Eddie Pate: Right. Find ways within your own sphere of influence your own communities, your own neighborhoods, you know, your ability to like we live in shoreline, Washington, just north of Seattle, and we go to the protests. We go to organize functions, we support neighbors. I started, you know, when I first moved here, a chat group with all the neighbors all around us, we had this wonderful community that we now share articles and discussions and events that we go to. So I encourage all your listeners to find the ways that you can impact what's right around you and be part of resistive actions that show the collective nature of what we want in this country. And then here's the number one thing you can get everyone on, on, on your listeners and everyone to pay attention to is in November. Vote. Get everyone else around you to vote. If you have people pushing back, get them to vote. And that is. That is, you know, the best thing that anyone can do because we're seeing this. We're seeing massive turnouts because of resistive action. People are aware of the issues. They're not they're no longer being fed, you know you know you know, one bit of news because they always watch this. They're only hearing one voice now. They're now they're, it's expanding. So now use that same voice to get people to vote in November and, and move in the direction of human centered, you know. Dr. Kirk Adams: So that's a, that's a dropping of a pebble in your local pond, right? When you get someone else to vote 100%. Eddie Pate: Exactly. It causes many ripples. That's how, that's how change will happen, quite frankly. One voter, one individual, one person. You know, it could be as simple as is, is if you see someone or if you know someone who is an immigrant and is undocumented or something like that, they have a kind word for them. Those moments matter. That's what we're talking about. And in that very moment where you have a nice, you know, just say, hey, are you okay? Is everything fine? Like, you know, and it's, it's those moments that matter that we need to bring empathy back with. We have to be more empathetic. We have to understand the moments matter when we engage on individual actions day to day, right? We don't have to, we don't have to. We don't have to solve the big problem. We just have to be nice on a daily basis, quite frankly. Dr. Kirk Adams: So everyone be nice. Yes. So this time has flown by. I'm looking forward to next time. And we'll talk about power and privilege and meritocracy. It'll be another deep, rich conversation. But let's let's hear the title of your guide book, your how to how to Drop Those Pebbles in the Right Places book. Eddie Pate: It is Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging. Dr. Kirk Adams: Thank you. I have it right here in my book. Share. There is a Braille ready file for you Braille readers out there. It's a bookshare and you can read it and enjoy it and learn from it. And again, Eddie, how can people get in touch with you? Eddie Pate: So multiple ways. I am an open book. So. EddiePate21@gmail.com. So. EddiePate the numbers 21@gmail.com. You can go out to my website. Just type in Eddie Pate speaking and consulting. You'll see my website and then https://inclusivepebbles.com is where my book is. And send me an email. I will share all my contact information with you. Phone everything. Shoot me an email at EddiePate21@gmail.com. And if you want to talk, if you want to set up a time to maybe have me come in and speak to your organization or you know, just have a connected good to get to know you. Happy to do it. Dr. Kirk Adams: Wonderful, wonderful. And for me, my, my website is https://drkirkadams.com on there. I have a newsletter sign up and I'm on LinkedIn every day. @KirkAdamsPhD on LinkedIn. And I think Eddie and I are both involved in the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. And we are going to launch a community coalition this summer. So we would both invite you to go to the we call it is ISDI to the ISDI website and sign up for email alerts. And that is www dot letter I numeral 4 SDI.org. And this has been a Wonderful, thought provoking episode of podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. Thank you so much, Eddie. Lovely to have you back. For everyone listening, we'll we'll catch you next time. Eddie Pate: Thank you, thank you, thank you, I loved it. Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at https://www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep making an impact.